- 03/06/2025
This is an in-depth Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next week and beyond. A satellite special including a look at wildfire smoke and record-breaking Spring statistics. Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Honor Criswick.
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00:00Hello there and welcome to this week's Deep Dive. It's Tuesday so of course it's Deep Dive Day.
00:12We bring you these videos every week and if you've seen the thumbnail you'll know this week's Deep
00:17Dive is a very special one all about satellites and I've got a guest coming in for you later.
00:24But don't worry we're still going to talk about the weather over the next few days.
00:28This week's also been quite interesting. It's been a record-breaking spring. We're now into meteorological summer.
00:35So we're going to be talking about those stats for the spring we've just had, compare it to years previous as well.
00:43And there's also a few interesting things on the satellite imagery this week.
00:47So it's linked quite nicely with our satellite special which we did plan to do today.
00:51If you keep an eye on our Met Office socials you might already know what I'm talking about.
00:55But we'll bring you on to that in a moment. Firstly I'm going to take a look at the weather over the next few days.
01:02Sunshine and showers is pretty much the theme. It's a bit of a rinse and repeat day to day.
01:06But nevertheless we will go through it. And if you're a recurring member of our Met Office crew, welcome.
01:12And if you are new here make sure you give this video a like and don't forget to subscribe as well so you don't miss any of our weekly content.
01:19So let's get cracking then. So I'm just going to turn on the jet stream because it's quite interesting.
01:26It's still quite a wavy jet stream. But at the moment it's dipping towards the south of the country.
01:33Now for most of spring, especially at the beginning, we still did have that wavy jet stream.
01:38But it kind of meandered to the north of the UK and that allowed high pressure to build to the south,
01:44which is why we had one of the driest starts to spring and why it was so incredibly sunny.
01:50It almost looked like it was going to be the driest spring until we had quite a lot of wet weather towards the end of May.
01:54But now for the beginning of meteorological summer, still meandering, but now to the south.
01:58So that means it picks up areas of low pressure drifting in from the Atlantic, depending on whereabouts it sits in the jet stream.
02:06It can be picked up by it, but fuelled by the jet stream.
02:10And that brings us, yes, the wet and windy weather, which we've already seen this week.
02:14This cold front, for example, I'm just going to switch the jet stream back off.
02:18This cold front, you can just about see it still this afternoon towards the southeast,
02:22all linked with this area of low pressure just to the north of the country.
02:27Now, this did bring some quite wet and windy weather overnight, particularly across the northwest.
02:32We did have a risk of coastal gales here.
02:34Definitely enough of a wind to kind of knock your bins over first thing in the morning.
02:38That rain is now lingering towards the southeast.
02:41It's probably going to stall there for a little bit.
02:43Eventually, we'll say goodbye to it.
02:44But still plenty of isobars on the chart just to the north there, closer to that centre of the low.
02:49So it's still pretty windy across the northwest.
02:52And there's plenty of showers.
02:54We'll take a look at the detail in a moment.
02:55It looks quite dry, but there's actually plenty of showers behind this system, too.
03:00So we're eventually going to say goodbye to this cold front as it clears.
03:05But notice, even as we head into tomorrow, low pressure still situated to the north.
03:11Still that southern flank of the low bringing in that quite breezy weather.
03:15But we're likely into tomorrow to see those winds eventually ease away as that low pressure starts to push its way further north.
03:21There's still going to be plenty of showers behind it and at times some longer spells of rain.
03:26So tomorrow night into Thursday, another system just clipping on more to kind of the northeastern part of that high, just drifting in from the low as we see that westerly prevailing wind.
03:39So bringing in more cloud, more moisture across parts of the south Thursday.
03:45Now, eventually this clears away, but we're still in that westerly flow.
03:49It's still going to be dragging in plenty of showers at times.
03:53These showers forming longer spells of rain.
03:55They become more organised and they kind of band together those showers, bringing more persistent outbreaks of rain.
04:01And that is pretty much the set up over the next few days.
04:06Let's take a look at the detail.
04:09I'm going to move over to Wednesday because Tuesday's almost over now.
04:14But you can see showers, spells of rain over the next few days, even as we head into the weekend.
04:21Now, especially tomorrow, it's really going to be the northwest that are in that main firing line for the showers.
04:27Still quite blustery, a chance we could see some quite heavy showers at times.
04:32And then it's going to be across the west where we see the bulk of the showers if they drift their way eastwards.
04:36As they kind of move their way inland, they lose a bit of that fuel, so they tend to dry out.
04:42You don't get quite as many across the east or southeast, so Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, East Anglia, Sussex and Kent.
04:48You might not see quite as many, more of a chance of seeing a slightly drier day tomorrow, but there is always a risk.
04:54Keep your brolly close would be my advice.
04:58Thursday, as I showed you with that system coming in across the south, we'll probably see those showers ease away a little bit into Wednesday night.
05:05And then Thursday, it's going to be quite a wet start for Northern Ireland and northern parts of England on Thursday.
05:12And then it becomes quite showery.
05:14I'll just see if I can show you that times this.
05:20Here we go.
05:22Yeah, so we can see during the early hours of the morning.
05:24So if you're almost below that, if you're up early for that Monday morning commute, it's going to be a very wet start across Northern Ireland.
05:31Parts of Wales, parts of the south as that system pushes up from the southwest.
05:35And we're probably going to see those winds pick up as well.
05:38So a wet and windy start for Thursday.
05:40And then once again, that clearing through.
05:42And then it's continuation of showers basically drifting in from the west.
05:47You know, plenty of showers over the weekend, not looking like quite as many on Sunday or it doesn't quite go far enough.
05:53What I looked at earlier, it looks like there's not going to be quite as many, but there is still that risk pretty much through.
05:59So here we go.
06:02Here's Sunday.
06:02So it doesn't look like there's going to be quite as many.
06:06However, that risk of showers is continuing.
06:09And it's always going to be across the west, the main firing line for those showers.
06:12There's always going to be that risk of heavy showers, possibly the odd rumble of thunder.
06:16So it's going to be one of those days where the weather is very changeable.
06:19You know, you could get a heavy downpour one minute and then all of a sudden the sunshine comes out.
06:23But in terms of temperatures, I mean, it's not going to be feeling quite as warm as it as it has done of late.
06:30But temperatures across the south and southeast are still going to be in the mid to high teens.
06:35But that obviously being quite offset at times with the wet and windy weather, it's really across the north.
06:40We're starting to see things cool down a little bit.
06:43It's definitely going to feel a lot fresher if you compare it to last week, for example.
06:47So mid to low teens, but obviously the strong winds, the rain, it still doesn't feel quite pleasant, even though temperatures aren't too low.
06:55But returning more towards average for the time of year.
07:00So quite a different outlook to the start of spring.
07:06Now, we are now technically in summer in a meteorological sense.
07:10Astronomical summer doesn't start until the 21st of June, the summer solstice.
07:14Solstice. I know some of you feel quite strongly about that.
07:17But for us meteorologists, we are now in summer.
07:20We do it every three months basically to keep climate records consistent.
07:26And this week we've had a Met Office blog go out with our with our provisional stats around spring.
07:33So spring as a whole.
07:36And like some previous springs, it has really been outstanding.
07:41So we're now seeing for 2025, we have had the sunniest spring or also the warmest if you're talking about mean average temperature.
07:52Now, that record was originally in 2020.
07:56This is a scatter graph.
07:57I'll talk through it in a moment.
07:59I was going to say I made it, but I didn't actually.
08:01Aidan made it and I stole it.
08:03I won't take credit for Aidan's graph.
08:05But this is a scatter plot, shows mean temperature along the bottom, sunshine hours along the along the Y axis.
08:15Yeah.
08:16Make sure I got that right.
08:18So the last few springs have been outliers.
08:23But it's likely that we'll start to see a few more of these outliers along with our kind of changing climate as we go on.
08:31So we've had the sunniest and warmest spring.
08:35The previous record was in 2020.
08:37Many people do remember that spring.
08:39It was during lockdown.
08:39It was really warm and sunny and not a lot of us could even go out and enjoy it.
08:44And previous records to this, that was in 2024.
08:47So the spring before, if you remember, it was really wet.
08:51It was a really dull spring.
08:53Very, very few sunshine hours if you compare it to the average.
08:57So over the last five years or so, we have seen some quite record-breaking springs.
09:02And they're becoming increasingly common in recent years as this kind of scatter plot shows.
09:10So I've had a lot of statistics thrown at me over the last few days because we've had our May statistics
09:16and also our spring statistics.
09:17So I have got them in front of me just so I make sure I get them right.
09:20But 2020, before this year, was the sunniest spring.
09:25Around 630 hours of sunshine.
09:28It was a pretty warm one.
09:30Average temperatures were around 8.8 degrees.
09:34So it was the sunniest spring on record before this one.
09:38And if we take a look at 2024, that was also a very warm spring.
09:42I think it was the warmest.
09:43But it was also very wet.
09:45So it was totally almost polar opposites if you compare it to the spring we've just had
09:52and the spring the year before.
09:53Still very warm, but this one very dry, very sunny.
09:56And the year before, very dull and not a lot of sunshine at all.
10:01So this spring, it's now been released now that the mean temperature was just below 9.5 degrees Celsius.
10:08So the warmest spring on record for average mean temperature.
10:11Exceptionally sunny, so we got 660 hours worth of sunshine, whereas 2020, it was 630.
10:18So it beat it by around 30 hours.
10:21But I think what's really interesting about this scatterplot is just how here's 2025, here's 2024, 2020,
10:29whereas previous years kind of follow this trend.
10:32So the outliers are really in the last few years.
10:35It's really the last few years, most recently, where we've started to see those records being broken more and more.
10:41Now, here's something I did take from our blog, All Around Sunshine Statistics.
10:49It's on our website if you want to go into any more detail.
10:53So mean temperature, which was around 9.5 degrees, that was surpassed by the long-term climatological average.
11:05It's been a long day, by about 1.5 degrees Celsius.
11:09So that makes it the warmest spring since records began, which is around 1884.
11:17I mean, I'm going over these because it truly is really interesting, this spring, how it compares to previous springs,
11:23and particularly over the last few years.
11:25Eight out of the ten UK springs have occurred, eight out of the ten warmest, have occurred since the year 2000,
11:31which is about here, and three of the warmest springs have occurred since 2017.
11:38So it's just kind of showing my point, really, that records are being broken.
11:43We're starting to see these extremes more and more in more recent years.
11:47And this spring, all four nations actually had their highest mean temperature, including Northern Ireland.
11:52They beat a record which was set all the way back in 1893.
11:57So we're beating records that were, you know, from quite a long time ago.
12:00So just adding to our evidence, really, of our changing climate over the next few days.
12:06Our changing over the next few years, I mean.
12:11So that's a little, a very brief overview of kind of a spring stats.
12:15But I did really want to show that graph that Aidan made because I think it illustrates it quite clearly.
12:19But if you want more information, go onto our Met Office website.
12:22We've got all the spring stats, all the May stats, so you can take a look at them if you're a big fan of statistics.
12:28I also want to show you something interesting, which can be seen on our satellite imagery.
12:36It's been seen pretty much since the weekend.
12:40So I'm not, it's a bit, it's a bit jolty, this satellite image, but you can still basically see it.
12:44So obviously the, the whiter sections, that's that cold front, which I showed you earlier, just across the southeast.
12:50But can you see these darker colours here?
12:52I can't see it too well on my screen.
12:54I'll try and show you.
12:55There's just some darker colours just towards, just underneath that more convective cloud.
12:59I think that you can kind of see it a little bit there.
13:02And what this actually is, it's, it's dust coming all the way from Canada.
13:08They've had quite a few wildfires, tragically, similar to last year.
13:13And they've had quite a lot of heat, some quite dry conditions that can lead to a wildfire risk,
13:20a chance we could see, you know, more wildfires along with our changing climate.
13:24And it gets lifted up, lifted up high up in the atmosphere.
13:28It gets thrown into the winds high up in the atmosphere and that drags across the Atlantic
13:32and it gets swept towards us in the UK.
13:35Now it's unlikely to cause any impacts, you know, towards our kind of boundary layer,
13:41our lower layer in the atmosphere.
13:42It stays high up, but it can bring some interesting sunsets and sunrises.
13:48I'm going to turn that off because it's a little bit jolty.
13:49So you might have seen over the weekend, we've got quite a lot of pictures,
13:53some very orange and red sunsets and sunrises.
13:57And it's likely we'll see that over the next few days with some satellite imagery
14:01that's more zoomed out across the Atlantic.
14:03We can still see that smoke, that dust being brought over all the way from Canada.
14:08And it just reflects that light slightly differently,
14:10which is why you get some quite pretty sunrises and sunsets.
14:14But obviously it comes out of a negative outcome or from the wildfires.
14:20But I think it's just interesting that we can see it so clearly on the satellite image,
14:26which leads me nicely on to my chat I had earlier with Simon.
14:31And we talk a little bit about the history of satellites,
14:35about the future, some future developments.
14:37And we've got some really interesting images to show you as well.
14:40And it really shows how far we've come in terms of satellite imagery.
14:44So I'm here with our special guest, Simon.
14:47Hi, Simon. Welcome to this week's Deep Dive.
14:49Thank you so much for joining us.
14:51Now, we're going to talk a bit about satellites.
14:53But firstly, do you want to introduce yourself,
14:55what your job title is and what it is that you do here at the Met Office?
14:59Hi, my name is Simon Keogh.
15:00I work in the Met Office's science area, and I am one of the heads in science.
15:06And I'm head of an area called Space Applications and Nowcasting R&D.
15:10And our purpose is to help the Met Office to improve its capabilities
15:14to know exactly what's going on in our environment right now
15:16and how that's likely to change in the very short term.
15:19Yeah, OK. Very interesting.
15:21So today we are going to talk about satellites.
15:24We're going to talk about their history, how they've evolved,
15:26and a quick look at the future as well.
15:28And we've got some really interesting images to show you.
15:31But firstly, could you just give us a brief explanation
15:34as to what satellites actually are and how they work?
15:39Yeah. So essentially, there's two types of satellites
15:41that are really important to us in meteorology.
15:44And the first type is called geostationary satellite.
15:47So this is a not really stationary satellite,
15:50but it happens to be orbiting the Earth
15:52at exactly the same rate that the Earth is turning.
15:54So it appears to us to be stationary in the sky.
15:56And that's really important because it can provide us
15:59with rapidly updating pictures of what's happening in our environment.
16:04And the slight downside of them is that they're quite far away,
16:08so about 36,000 kilometres away from the Earth,
16:12which is why we then have the second type of satellite,
16:14which are the low-Earth orbiting satellites.
16:17And these orbit around 700 kilometres above the Earth.
16:20And there's quite a few of them.
16:22And they provide us with more high-resolution detail of what's going on.
16:25But of course, they don't revisit the same spot quite as often.
16:29So we do need both, but for slightly different purposes.
16:33And when it comes to weather forecasting,
16:35I mean, I'm a meteorologist.
16:36I started off in aviation forecasting
16:38where they're incredibly useful.
16:41And I've started off observing as well.
16:43You know, you're on the ground, you're looking up at the sky.
16:45But satellites, they give you that wide-scale view from above, don't they?
16:49And they're great for kind of tracking, you know, storms,
16:52not just here in the UK.
16:54You know, tropical cyclones, hurricanes, frontal systems coming in.
16:58They're great, you know, comparing satellites to our models here
17:01that we use at the Met Office in kind of terms of verification.
17:05So when it comes to weather forecasting,
17:07they're incredibly useful, aren't they?
17:09Absolutely.
17:10And I'd be as bold as to say to our audience today
17:13that if it weren't for satellites,
17:15you know, weather forecasting would be straight back to the 1960s,
17:19the very early 1960s, in terms of its capability.
17:22And, you know, back in those days,
17:24it was actually very, very challenging to forecast
17:26and even to know what was happening with large-scale storms
17:29when you only have those kind of point observations
17:32from ships and buoys, land sites and so on.
17:35And just, I mean, we're going to go through them in a minute,
17:38but now that what we can take from those satellite imagery,
17:40it's not just, you know, those black and white pictures,
17:43the amount of detail now that we can see.
17:46Yeah, we've got some pretty amazing images
17:48that we're going to show you.
17:49But before we look at, you know, the current images,
17:52what we can expect in the future,
17:53I just want to go back to the history.
17:56So do you want to start off by explaining
17:58what Meteosat is to start off with?
18:01Yeah, so Meteosat has got quite a long heritage to it.
18:04It's a series of satellites that are produced by UMITSAT.
18:07And essentially the first couple of generations
18:11of that satellite have been going for many years now
18:14and we're just about to switch over
18:16to the third generation satellite in our operations.
18:19So perhaps say a bit, show a few images later on,
18:22no spoilers.
18:23Yeah.
18:23But the first Meteosat was really good.
18:27It was a spin-stabilised satellite.
18:30It was just taking those infrared and visible pictures of the Earth,
18:33which are great because it means you're not limited
18:35to just looking at the Earth in daytime.
18:37You actually get to see in the infrared what's happening
18:39with the clouds at nighttime as well.
18:41So you get full 24-hour coverage,
18:44but you are looking at one side of the Earth to do that.
18:47And, you know, we've got plenty of images
18:49we can show you from those in a little while.
18:51Yeah, especially because, like I said,
18:53it's coming from an observing point of view.
18:56You do observations at night,
18:58which is basically impossible.
19:01So having those infrared images where you can see, you know,
19:03what the cloud's doing through the course of the night
19:06is, like, incredibly useful.
19:09And also being able to see satellites on a loop
19:13rather than, I know, quite a long time ago,
19:16you would get maybe an image a day,
19:18whereas now we're getting them every few minutes.
19:20And you can kind of link those images together,
19:22create a bit of a loop,
19:23and it's really useful to watch systems coming in
19:25or to see cloud growth, for example, on an infrared image.
19:29If a cloud is getting whiter and whiter,
19:31it's growing as it moves into that colder part of the atmosphere.
19:33Great, for example, in a showery set-up,
19:36you can see that cloud coming from a cumulus, for example,
19:40all the way up to a cumulonimbus.
19:41You're looking at risk of showers, possibly thunderstorms.
19:44So just even having them on a loop now
19:46rather than just having one image in the past
19:49is incredibly useful.
19:51Yes, absolutely.
19:51Because the first weather satellites,
19:53the Tiros series back in the 1960s,
19:56you really just had that odd overpass happening.
20:00And the images, they weren't coming in
20:02on a nice video screen like this.
20:03They were coming in on a fax machine.
20:06So I actually spoke yesterday to somebody
20:08who was a forecaster back in the 1960s,
20:11and they told us of the excitement they felt
20:12when the fax was coming through.
20:14And they were going to get that picture
20:15of what was happening over the Atlantic and around the UK.
20:18So it was a game-changer in its day.
20:22And I don't want to use the word game-changer too often,
20:25but it really was a big game-changer in those days.
20:27Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting
20:29when you look at the history of meteorology,
20:31even from my perspective,
20:33like learning meteorology and drawing charts,
20:37you know, your simple warm fronts, cold fronts.
20:39I mean, I've started off doing it on the computer,
20:42whereas I know many people back in the day
20:44had their red pen, their blue pen,
20:45drawing them on, looking at observations.
20:47So, I mean, the history of meteorology in itself
20:50is so interesting.
20:52This is from a really old video
20:54that one of our colleagues managed to find.
20:56It's from ESA, the European Space Agency,
20:59around the first meteor site satellite.
21:02We weren't sure of the date,
21:03but they talk about the future being in 1980
21:06when they talk about the second meteor sat launch.
21:09So it's an old video,
21:11but the clips are really cool.
21:13So shall we take a look at some of the images
21:15we've got on the screen?
21:16We'll work our way down, shall we?
21:18We'll start from left to right.
21:19So this is really interesting.
21:22I'm sure many of you can remember this.
21:24This was in 2010.
21:27There was, we had quite a lot of ash in the atmosphere.
21:30What was the volcano?
21:31Was it in Iceland?
21:32Do you remember the volcano?
21:33The volcano was in Iceland.
21:34It had a really, really difficult to pronounce name.
21:36I'm not going to...
21:36Oh, okay.
21:37For short, we call it Aya.
21:38There we go, yeah.
21:39I couldn't quite remember its name,
21:41but I do remember this happening.
21:43I remember being in school.
21:44I had a friend.
21:45She would never travel.
21:47She went to Sweden to visit some family,
21:48and she got stuck there
21:49because obviously no planes were flying.
21:52Ash is incredibly hazardous in terms of aviation.
21:55So do you want to talk us through the images
21:57that we had at the time?
21:59Yeah, I'll talk you through these.
22:00Yeah, so at the time,
22:01this is the sort of image
22:02that we would have been generating
22:03from the meteor second-generation satellites.
22:06And it looks a bit psychedelic with the colours,
22:09but the bit you have to notice
22:10is this sort of crimson strip down here.
22:14This is the ash that we see in the infrared
22:18from the satellite.
22:20And this is really important
22:21because it tells you roughly where the ash is.
22:23But in those days,
22:25we didn't really have much more information than that,
22:27which kind of led to the aviation industry
22:30having to sort of close skies for a while.
22:32So that was a lot of disruption,
22:33and people at home might remember that.
22:36But since then,
22:37a lot of science has been done in the Met Office
22:39and around the world
22:40to try to extract more information from the satellites.
22:43And what we can now do
22:44is we can now show you things like
22:47the amount of the mass of the ash
22:49in the atmospheric column beneath the satellite.
22:52So you can see these colours here
22:53with the reds being where there's a high loading of mass
22:56and then the paler colours where the loading is less.
23:00So that's quite important.
23:01We can also find out what the height of the ash is.
23:04We've got estimates of the height of the ash.
23:06And then down here,
23:07even the average particle size within the ash.
23:11Now, this is quite important
23:12for the people who make aircraft engines
23:15because they're building aircraft engines
23:18to a certain specification
23:19to be able to withstand a certain amount of ash loading, etc.
23:26And if we can give them more accurate information about that,
23:28then they get a better estimate of,
23:30well, is an aircraft engine going to be in danger
23:32if it flies through this?
23:34Which is much more useful
23:35than just showing them that here is some ash.
23:39They can actually begin to start
23:41to take more informed decisions.
23:43Yeah, that's really interesting
23:44that a real world example
23:45led to the future of satellite imagery as well.
23:48I think that's really interesting.
23:49I learned a huge amount from this one volcano.
23:51Yeah, well, of course, quite a lot of disruption,
23:53you could say, couldn't it,
23:55for that time.
23:56This is another really interesting one.
23:59Quite a lot of our YouTube audience, for example,
24:01find the aurora really interesting.
24:03We're currently at quite an active stage
24:05of this kind of sunspot activity.
24:09We had, it wasn't too long ago, was it,
24:11that the kind of light stretched
24:12all the way down to the south
24:13and people got some really amazing images.
24:16But I really loved taking a look at these,
24:18taking a look at what they look like
24:19from, you know, from above.
24:21Yeah, so this is a low-light image
24:23at night time
24:25from a satellite called Sumi NPP,
24:27which is a low-Earth orbiting satellite.
24:29And what you can see in here
24:30is obviously you can see the streetlights in here,
24:32which are really fascinating in themselves.
24:34They get a bit blurry
24:35where you've got low cloud
24:36over the top of the streetlights.
24:38But you can also see gas flares in the North Sea as well.
24:41There's little dots in the North Sea.
24:42And of course, the aurora up there as well
24:44as the gases in the atmosphere
24:48become ionised by the incoming solar particles
24:51from solar wind.
24:53Is this one similar?
24:55Is it just like the colours have...
24:56Yeah, what we've done in this one
24:58is we've overlaid in blue where the cloud is.
25:01So you can still see the aurora in yellow
25:03and the light's in yellow.
25:05But you can see where the cloud is as well in this one.
25:08Yeah, yeah, this is, yeah,
25:10a really, really cool one, I think.
25:13Now we've got a couple of images as well.
25:15This will kind of illustrate nicely
25:17what I was telling you about
25:18kind of through the night time.
25:22Firstly, we've got our true colour image.
25:24This is showing some smoke from Canadian wildfires,
25:27but actually a couple of years ago,
25:28but it's quite relevant to this week.
25:30We've had, obviously, the return of the wildfires across Canada.
25:34That smoke's being picked up, sweeping across the Atlantic,
25:37and it's giving us some quite nice sunrises and sunsets,
25:41but unfortunately it's not coming from a positive source.
25:45But notice as the kind of sun goes down,
25:48that image, I mean, it turns blank, doesn't it?
25:50Whereas if we overlay...
25:53Is it infrared that goes over the top of this one?
25:56Yes, that's right.
25:57So at night time, you're getting the infrared information as well.
26:00But in the daytime, you've got the visible backscatter
26:02showing you as well where the dust is from the smoke.
26:07And it's amazing to see how that dust
26:10that's coming out of those Canadian wildfires
26:13actually is transported so far around the globe, actually.
26:16With these images, you get a sense of
26:18there's a real global system at play here.
26:21Yeah, it's nice to see it visually.
26:23And it always makes me laugh when I see images like this
26:26because that was one of my interview questions for the Met Office.
26:30I got given a satellite image and I had to point out the cloud,
26:32the smoke, the snow, and all the differences.
26:34So it always kind of takes me back, this one.
26:38But it's true what you're saying.
26:39It's really interesting to see how it all links together.
26:41This one is a particular favourite of mine.
26:44Now, this is...
26:46I knew I was going to forget what they were called.
26:48Von Karmen vortices, this is an example of.
26:52So it's when you have quite a stable wind, quite a stable atmosphere.
26:56The wind is drifting.
26:57This is the Canary Islands, I think, isn't it?
26:59The wind kind of drifts towards the island and it gets pushed round.
27:03And similar to kind of a rock in a stream,
27:06that water goes round and kind of swirls and eddies further down.
27:10And you can see that imagery so beautifully here
27:13as it moves its way further south, I suppose.
27:16And you can see all those swirls and vortices
27:18as they move round the Canary Islands.
27:20So this image is incredible.
27:22And like I was saying to you earlier,
27:24you know, from observing the weather from the ground up,
27:28you wouldn't be able to see this, would you?
27:29So satellite imagery can really tell us a lot about the atmosphere
27:32and how it's reacting to situations like this.
27:35So it's really impressive that, you know, as you're saying,
27:40you know, if it weren't for those islands there,
27:42like rocks in a stream, you'd have a nice laminar flow of cloud.
27:47And instead, you get all of these amazing disturbances
27:51for quite a long distance away from the actual islands.
27:55Yeah, it just carries on going down, doesn't it?
27:57Really cool.
28:00Actually, no, maybe this one's my favourite.
28:03They're all my favourite.
28:04This one, it moves quite quickly.
28:06Blink and you miss it.
28:08But what you notice is, you can just about see this.
28:11I think you pointed out the sun earlier moves up there
28:14and then the moon moves down there.
28:16That's right.
28:16So this is an image that shows a solar eclipse
28:19and it's a really great meteorite animation.
28:22Actually, there's so much going on in it.
28:23So in blue, you've got the clouds in blue are actually very high
28:27and very, very cold clouds.
28:29So something of a hazard for aviation potentially.
28:31So something to watch.
28:33But at the same time, you've got the sun moving across
28:35and then you've got the moon's shadow also moving here
28:38from the top left down to the bottom right.
28:41So, you know, and it's very difficult to actually see an eclipse in real life.
28:44But if you've got access to this imagery,
28:46you can watch an eclipse in your armchair quite comfortably when they come around.
28:52So, yeah, there's a huge amount going on in that one.
28:54Yeah.
28:54I could sit and stare at that image, but I am a big, big weather nerd.
28:59Now, these two are really cool, actually.
29:01This one, it's showing convection, isn't it?
29:04The kind of brighter orangey colours.
29:07Yeah.
29:07So the bright orangey colours are where the cloud is extremely cold.
29:11But what we're doing here is we're actually overlaying the textural information
29:14from the visible channel here on the infrared.
29:16And that gives you a sense of the bubbliness of the cloud
29:19for want of a better expression.
29:20Yeah, yeah.
29:21And the more bubbly they are, the more is a chance that what's happened
29:24is that you've got a packet of moist air which is kind of overshot.
29:28It's risen so fast it's overshot the place where it's supposed to stop.
29:32Yeah.
29:32And it's gone up and then it's actually become really, really cold.
29:35And these can be a real hazard for aviation.
29:38You can cause severe icing.
29:40Yeah.
29:41And this one is different.
29:45When I first saw it, I thought it was something similar,
29:47but this is actually something different, isn't it?
29:49Yeah, this is very different.
29:50So what we've got here is Central Africa.
29:53We've got the clouds bubbling up on the sort of daily cycle,
29:56this diurnal cycle where you've got, you know, the heating of the surface,
29:59the moisture rising to create these enormous clouds.
30:02But what you can see here with these blue flashes going on
30:05is that's actually lightning.
30:07And on the current Meteor 3rd generation satellite,
30:10the first that was launched a couple of years ago,
30:11we've got a lightning imager on there.
30:13So you can composite the cloud and the lightning together
30:16and you can see just what kind of electrical activity is going on there.
30:20We know that this kind of lightning is a hazard for all kind of aviation,
30:24particularly helicopters and so on.
30:26So it's really important to be able to have awareness
30:29that, you know, these clouds are electrically active.
30:32And, you know, when you move away to other parts of the world,
30:36you know, particularly over the ocean,
30:37where we haven't got any ground-based measurements of lightning,
30:40because we do have ground-based lightning monitoring networks,
30:42you don't really get much information over the oceans in a way.
30:46And that's where the satellite comes into its own,
30:48particularly in those unpopulated or badly observed regions
30:51to give you that extra information.
30:53Yeah, and that's a good point.
30:55I mean, I suppose I have thought about it like that,
30:57but especially for us here in the UK,
30:59we're always monitoring what's coming in off the Atlantic
31:01and it's moving its way towards us.
31:03So it makes total sense, you know,
31:05how incredibly vital the satellite images are.
31:09So final one, this one is this mind-blowing,
31:12the amount of detail that we can see.
31:14It's on a bit of a loop, so it will zoom back out in a moment.
31:18Here we go.
31:19So this is where it starts off.
31:22Zoom over to the Alps and you can, you know,
31:24you can see so clearly, you know, the snow, can't you?
31:27And you pointed out a few other details as well.
31:29The snow in the Alps, even you can see it's sort of algal activity there
31:32in the ocean, in the Adriatic there just off the coast of Italy.
31:36You can see those blooms, that productivity in the water.
31:40And that's something really amazing to be able to see
31:43from a geostationary satellite.
31:45The resolution is absolutely incredible.
31:47Yeah.
31:48I wonder if one day we'll be able to zoom right here to us in the studio
31:52doing the deep dive, maybe for the next one.
31:56One day, maybe.
31:58So we've talked a bit about the past,
32:00about some current images that we have.
32:02Let's talk about the future,
32:03because there's a couple of things happening even this year, isn't there?
32:06A couple of satellite launches.
32:07Oh, yes, we've got a couple of really important launches coming up this year.
32:10So in July, we've got the launch of the second METESAT satellite,
32:14which has a different payload to the first one.
32:16This one's got an infrared sounder on board,
32:18which we've never had over Europe before.
32:20And this will give us three-dimensional temperature and humidity information
32:24and structural information over Europe every half an hour,
32:28which is just going to be incredible.
32:30And we'll be able to use that to know more about how stable the atmosphere is,
32:34whether we've got those convective systems or not.
32:36And also we'll be able to use it for numerical weather prediction
32:39and assimilate that into a numerical model.
32:41So we're really looking forward to that.
32:43And then later on in summer, I think in August,
32:46there's a scheduled launch of the first of the new METOP low-Earth orbiting satellites.
32:51And the new METOPs will have enhanced microwave sounders and infrared sounders,
32:56again, for assimilation to numerical weather prediction.
32:59We'll have a radio occultation sensor on there,
33:01which is a very smart sensor that kind of looks through the Earth's limbs.
33:05And so if you imagine in this picture here at the edge of the Earth's disc,
33:09you look at radio waves that are coming from GPS satellites on the other side of the Earth,
33:14and you measure how much that GPS signal is bent as it goes through the Earth's atmosphere.
33:19You can get information there about what's happening,
33:22the refractivity of the upper atmosphere and the density structure in the upper atmosphere,
33:27where we've got no other observations to really tell you that.
33:30So there's lots to look forward to with these two satellites that are coming up,
33:34and we're sort of really hopeful that those launches go okay.
33:37Yeah, it's exciting.
33:39Exciting stuff.
33:40I'm sure it'll all be fine.
33:40And we've got a quick clip as well of Phil Evans just talking a bit about the future of satellites too.
33:49Hi, my name's Phil Evans, and I'm the Director General of UMETSAT,
33:53Europe's Meteorological Satellite Agency.
33:56It's an incredibly exciting time for us as an organisation.
33:58At the end of last year, our first next-generation geostationary satellite became operational as MeteorSat-12.
34:08This year, we've got two exciting launches.
34:12The launch of MTGS-1, which is the first European sounding satellite in geostationary orbit,
34:18and the first of our next-generation low-Earth orbit satellites, Metop-SG-A1.
34:25These will provide a wealth of new data, which will allow the MetServices in our member states
34:31to enhance the accuracy of their forecasts and develop new services.
34:37And at the forefront of that will be the network of satellite application facilities
34:40who are working to develop important, innovative new applications and products for our data.
34:47Looking to the future, we're working on new programmes.
34:50EPS-Sterner, which is a novel constellation of microwave-sounding satellites.
34:57EPS-Aeolus, which will measure three-dimensional winds in the atmosphere
35:01and an extension of our existing work on antimetry programmes.
35:06What satellite imagery is really going to bring for the public and its customers?
35:11Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
35:13Yeah, well, for the public, obviously the public benefits from, you know, from all of our forecasts.
35:18And I think the point that I can't make enough to people when they're trying to understand
35:23what the Met Office does is how fundamental the satellite data are
35:27and the observations generally are to everything we do.
35:30Because what the Met Office does, it does two really important things.
35:33The first thing it does is make observations of the environment, which we've been doing since 1850,
35:38since we were first set up.
35:40And we contribute those observations into the global observing system for the international community.
35:45And the second thing we do is we take observations out of that data bank, if you like,
35:51from all the countries combined.
35:53And when we transform them into products and services,
35:56which will benefit the UK to the tune of over £3 billion a year.
36:00So what we're doing is really important.
36:02But without the observations, in particular satellites, all of that stops.
36:07So, you know, if there's any of my team watching this, no pressure.
36:11But you've got to stay on the ball here.
36:14It's really vital that we keep on using these data.
36:18And as a nation, we keep investing in Earth observation generally
36:23because it's, you know, the returns we get are, you know, huge.
36:28Yeah. And it's all about those international relationships as well, isn't it?
36:31You know, this is worldwide.
36:33You know, we just saw in some of those images how it all links together.
36:36So it's, you know, that's kind of part of it as well, sharing information and creating those images.
36:42You know, we, as a Met Office, deal mainly with UMETSAT, who produce some nice example images like these ones for us.
36:49But, you know, UMETSAT is basically a legal entity that involves 30 different countries around Europe.
36:56And we've come together as a club to encourage UMETSAT to build the satellites of the future.
37:03Now, they don't build them themselves.
37:05They take our requirements and then they put contracts out to get them built.
37:10The actual building will be done by the European Space Agency, which has their 50th birthday this year.
37:15Yeah, that's coming right up.
37:17So, so, but not showing its age, I'd say.
37:20No.
37:20Doing very well for itself.
37:21So ESA keeps building these satellites for us and also research satellites as well to look at climate change.
37:27And it's really important that we have, you know, we have an international team here in the Met Office whose job it is to manage that relationship with UMETSAT.
37:38And then UMETSAT don't just build, you know, commission the building of satellites for us.
37:43They also act as a hub for all the third party data that we use as well.
37:47So we use data from American satellites, from Japanese satellites, from Chinese satellites and providers all over the world.
37:57And UMETSAT organises agreements with those countries so that we're all effectively sharing our observations, which is important because, you know, we all live under the same sky.
38:07Yeah, exactly.
38:09You mentioned ESA's 50th birthday.
38:11It's also UMETSAT's 40th birthday next year.
38:15Yeah.
38:16But it's really interesting just to see, you know, where we started, where we're going.
38:22I mean, the developments in satellite imagery over that amount of time is incredible.
38:27And I'm, you know, really excited, I'm sure you are as well, to kind of see the future and the kind of images and information we can get about our atmosphere in the future.
38:35So thanks so much.
38:36One final question.
38:38How do you feel about the nickname Satellite Simon?
38:42Satellite Simon.
38:44I've been called worse.
38:45Have you?
38:45So I'll take that one.
38:47I thought it was quite catchy.
38:48I would take that good.
38:49Yeah.
38:50Then everyone will know.
38:51If we get you on again to take a look at some of these newer satellite images, Satellite Simon, everyone will know who you are.
38:58That's brilliant.
38:59It's a privilege.
39:00Thank you so much, Simon, for talking us through that.
39:02It was super, super interesting.
39:04And yes, hopefully we've not scared you off and you'll be coming back again one day soon.
39:08Okay, thanks very much.
39:09Thanks very much.
39:09I'm so glad that he liked the nickname Satellite Simon because I've been referring to him as that all morning.
39:18So I'm glad that one's stuck.
39:20But yes, that's it for this week's Deep Dive.
39:22Thank you so much again to Simon for joining us.
39:24And some of those images were truly incredible.
39:26And I'm really excited to see the kind of images we're going to get this year with our new satellite launches.
39:34So yes, thank you to Simon for joining.
39:35I hope you have enjoyed this week's Deep Dive.
39:38It's been a few days planning, getting all the satellite imagery into our system and stuff.
39:43So I hope you enjoyed some of those images.
39:45And of course, we'll be back next week for another Deep Dive.
39:49We're also here on Friday.
39:50It will be me and Alex Burkhill with this week's Weather Studio Live.
39:54So if you do have any questions for Simon about satellites or for me about the weather ahead, anything you like, stick them in the comments section.
40:02And we'll take a quick look and we might be able to answer them on Friday.
40:05Or you can join us during the live on Friday and ask your questions live.
40:11But yes, thank you for joining.
40:12If you haven't already, make sure to give this video a like.
40:15And if you are new here, make sure to subscribe.
40:18But I hope you have a good week and I'll speak to you again very soon.
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