Meteosat Third Generation

Severe storms can pose significant and increasing hazards to society. But help is at hand — a new generation of Meteosat satellites will soon be launched, delivering Earth observations of unprecedented range, resolution, and frequency.

Building on the decades-long legacy of Meteosat’s first and second generation satellites, Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) will revolutionise storm prediction, enhance weather forecasts, extend climate records, and provide a wide range of essential observations.

These measurements will underpin services, support livelihoods, and help save lives.

New satellites

MTG is one of the most complex and innovative meteorological geostationary satellite systems ever built. The complete constellation consists of three satellites: two imaging satellites and one sounding satellite, the first operational sounding satellite in a geostationary orbit.

Based on user requirements collected during the planning phase of the programme, MTG will provide near-real-time 3D snapshots of important characteristics of the atmosphere.

Better weather forecasting

One of the biggest benefits from these observations will be improvements to nowcasting — enabling forecasters to track the development of storms in near-real time and save valuable time in warning about severe and dangerous weather events.

By providing more detail about current weather conditions, MTG will also help improve the accuracy of longer range forecasts. Regular atmospheric soundings will provide more detailed information about developing weather patterns for numerical weather prediction (NWP) models.

MTG is also the first geostationary weather satellite with the capability to detect lightning data across a broad area over Europe, Africa, and the surrounding waters. This data will provide a major boost to very short-term nowcasting and numerical weather prediction models, which support longer-term forecasts.

Climate records

MTG's decades-long mission guarantees a continuity of geostationary data into the future. The long-term, consistent, extensive, and directly comparable datasets provided are invaluable to climate studies. Once MTG satellites reach the end of their mission, EUMETSAT will have amassed more than 60 years of comparative observations.

Essential products and services

Observations taken by MTG satellites will support the development of products and services that can provide major contributions to firefighting, air quality forecasts, air traffic control, search and rescue missions, disaster risk reduction, agricultural productivity, marine and coastal management, sustainable energy production, and much more.