What is the function of meteorological satellites?

Meteorological satellites are satellites used for meteorological observation. It is like an automatic "weather station" hanging high in space, which is the product of the combination of aerospace, remote sensing, computer, communication and control.

Satellites can carry out long-term and large-scale detection and prediction of global atmospheric changes, and carry out all-weather and all-weather observation, quickly collect and process data and information, and feed them back to ground receiving stations; It is also possible to observe areas that are difficult to reach on the ground without being limited by geographical and meteorological conditions. These are things that ground weather stations can't do.

Pioneer 2 is the first experimental meteorological satellite in the world. After five failed launches, the satellite was finally successfully launched on1February, 959 17. However, due to the uncontrollable satellite swing, the observation results are extremely unsatisfactory. The truly practical meteorological satellite in the world is "Tyrus" 1 launched by the United States in April. On April 2, scientists saw the weather map of the whole earth for the first time, instead of piecing together many isolated observations. These photos were taken at an altitude of 724 kilometers. Every time the satellite shoots an area with a width of about 1000 km, each photo covers an area about twice that of France. The photo shows the clouds over the northeastern United States and parts of Canada, and the curvature of the earth is clearly visible.

Up to now, more than 100 satellites have been launched all over the world, forming a huge global meteorological satellite network and spatial information system, which has played an important role in short-term and medium-term weather forecasting all over the world, enabling people to accurately obtain the movement law of the atmosphere, make accurate weather forecasting and greatly reduce disastrous losses. According to incomplete statistics, if natural disasters can be predicted for 3 ~ 5 days, the losses in agriculture can be reduced by 30% ~ 50%, and only agriculture, animal husbandry and fishery can benefit 65.438+0.7 billion US dollars every year, and other economic losses can be reduced by about 5 billion US dollars every year.