Map View | Interactive Meteosat

Welcome to the Interactive METEOSAT (IM) webmapping application

This application allows you to compare meteorological observations with METEOSAT satellite imagery. If this help does not answer your questions, please take a look at the User manual and the IM case study.

The user interface is composed of several sections, each of which is described below:

Map
The map is the main component of this application. Apart from displaying geographic information, it contains a navigation tool that allows you to zoom and pan around the map. The map is refreshed after each action you perform. A progress bar is displayed while new information is loaded into the map.

Toolbar
The toolbar contains all the instruments needed for map navigation (zoom, pan, etc.). A tooltip is displayed when you move the mouse cursor over the tools. The far-right tool allows you to switch between Geostationary and Map viewers.

Tabs
Located on the left side of the application, the tab panels allow you to switch between Layers list Meteorological Measurement Info and Help section. The entire left panel can be collapsed to make more space for the map.

Layers
The layers list is used to determine the way the map is composed and displayed. IM layers are grouped in three categories: Base layers (you can only toggle between these layers), METEOSAT (you can show/hide these layers and define one active layer), Meteorological observations (you can show/hide these layers). Each layer has at least one associated checkbox. The checkbox allows you to control the map composition by turning on and off the layer visibility. You can adjust the transparency for the active layer using the transparency slider.

Important notice: For technical reasons, and due to the Eumetsat data policy, the Meteosat channels from 09:00 UTC are available in higher resolution only at 12:00 UTC. However, all but the VIS 0.8 and NIR 1.6 channels are available in lower resolution format soon after image acquisition. The VIS 0.8 and NIR 1.6 channels from the previous day are shown until 12:00 UTC when the higher resolution images from the current day are made available.

Transparency slider
The slider allows you to change the transparency of the active layer.

Legend
This section provides a legend for the meteorological symbols displayed on the map.

Info
When you click on a meteorological observation on the map, details of that observation appear in this section. Also, all the observations from the selected day are listed here.

Credits
This section mentions all the sources that have contributed to this application. This includes data sources, software, graphics and other contributions.

Calendar
The calendar allows you to display satellite images and meteorological observations from the archive.

Add observations
The observations management interface can be accessed by clicking on the upper-right link.

Temperature

Symbol color	Values (Celsius degrees)
	< -25º
	-21º — -25º
	-16º — -20º
	-11º — -15º
	-6º — -10º
	-1º — -5º
	0º — 4º
	5º — 9º
	10º — 14º
	15º — 19º
	20º — 24º
	25º — 29º
	30º — 34º
	35º — 39º
	40º — 44º
	> 44º

Wind direction

Wind barbs point in the direction 'from' which the wind is blowing. In the case of the diagram below, the orientation of the wind barb indicates winds from the Northeast.

Wind speed

Each short barb represents 5 knots, each long barb 10 knots. A long barb and a short barb is 15 knots, simply by adding the value of each barb together (10 knots + 5 knots = 15 knots). If only a circle is plotted, the winds are calm. Pennants are 50 knots. Therefore, the last wind example in the chart below has a wind speed of 65 knots. (50 knots + 10 knots + 5 knots).

Symbol	Values Knots	Values m/s
	Calm	Calm
	1 - 4	0.5 - 2
	5	2.5
	10	5.1
	15	7.7
	20	10.2
	50	25.7
	65	30.8

Cloud cover

Symbol	Meaning
	Clear (0)
	Scattered clouds (1/4)
	Partly cloudy (1/2)
	Mostly cloudy (3/4)
	Overcast (4/4)

Current conditions

Symbol	Meaning
No symbol	Good visibility
	Mist
	Fog
	Drizzle
	Rain
	Snow
	Hail
	Thunderstorm

GLOBE temperature observations

Daily temperature average, maximum and minimum values collected through GLOBE network. The symbol colors are correlated with the IM temperature legend. Important notice: The GLOBE observations are from the previous day.

Interactive METEOSAT (IM) is a web-based interactive application for the teaching of satellite meteorology in secondary schools. IM was developed by ASRC for the Eduspace website of the European Space Agency (ESA). IM is build entirely with standard compliant free and open source software.

Data

METEOSAT images
http://www.eumetsat.int
© EUMETSAT (Terms of use)

Google Maps
http://maps.google.com
© Google (Terms of use)

OpenStreetMap
http://www.openstreetmap.org
© OpenStreetMap (CC-BY-SA METEOSAT imageslicense)

Natural Earth
http://www.naturalearthdata.com
© Natural Earth (Terms of use)

Blue Marble
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BlueMarble
© NASA Earth Observatory (Terms of use)

Yahoo Weather
http://weather.yahoo.com
© Yahoo (Terms of use)

GLOBE
http://www.globe.gov
© GLOBE (Terms of use)

Software

OpenLayers
http://www.openlayers.org
© OSGeo (BSD license)

GeoExt
http://geoext.org
© GeoExt Community (BSD license)

ExtJS
http://www.sencha.com/products/js
© Sencha (GPLv3 license)