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Weather monitoring and forecasting was one of the first civilian (as opposed to military) applications of satellite remote sensing, dating back to the first true weather satellite, TIROS-1 (Television and Infrared Observation Satellite - 1), launched in 1960 by the United States. Several other weather satellites were launched over the next five years, in near-polar orbits, providing repetitive coverage of global weather patterns. In 1966, NASA (the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration) launched the geostationary Applications Technology Satellite (ATS-1) which provided hemispheric images of the Earth's surface and cloud cover every half hour. For the first time, the development and movement of weather systems could be routinely monitored. Today, several countries operate weather, or meteorological satellites to monitor weather conditions around the globe. Generally speaking, these satellites use sensors which have fairly coarse spatial resolution (when compared to systems for observing land) and provide large areal coverage.
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