New Delhi: The Indian Meteorological Department on September 12 welcomed the launch
of "Metsat", the country's first satellite meant exclusively for weather sciences,
saying that it would give scientists better capability to predict phenomena like
monsoon and cyclones.
"We did not have an exclusive met satellite so far. Previous INSAT satellites which
worked in this field had other features as well," IMD deputy director general S R
Kalsi said.
"With Metsat, we will be able to continuously monitor our weather system. Since it
has features superior to INSAT 1D, which functioned as met satellite previously, we
will have better capability to predict phenomena like monsoon and cyclones," he
said.
The satellite would provide scientists with images, which would go a long way in
analysis of meteorological phenomena. It would help in the analysis of
meteorological products like cloud motion vectors, wind estimation, outgoing long
wave radiation and precipitation estimation, he said.
The exclusive weather satellite has imaging radiometre of resolution of two km in
invisible, eight km in infra-red, and eight km in water vapour. The radiometre is
used to take images of earth cloud cover.
The previous weather satellite, INSAT 1D, the fourth satellite in the INSAT series,
functioned till May 14 this year. The features of Metsat are superior to INSAT 1D,
which did not have water vapour resolution.
PTI
