SAT24 UK & Europe Satellite Analysis
Live • combined visible/infrared imagery, refreshed every 15 minutes
These images combine the visible and infrared satellite channels: by day you see clouds much as they'd look to the naked eye from space; after dark the view switches automatically to infrared so cloud cover stays visible through the night. Brighter, whiter cloud tops are higher and colder — usually a sign of more vigorous weather — while thin grey cloud is low and less significant.
Meteosat Second Generation • Imagery transmitted to Earth every 15 minutes
About Weather Satellites
Weather satellites observe cloud formations from space. Polar-orbiting satellites (NOAA, EUMETSAT Metop) circle the Earth at low altitude but only pass over any one area twice a day, so they can't give constant coverage. The imagery above instead comes from a geostationary satellite — Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) — orbiting at about 36,000 km. At that height a satellite takes exactly 24 hours to circle the Earth, so it stays fixed over the same point on the ground at all times, continuously imaging the same region rather than passing over it briefly twice a day.
See also: Rainfall Radar (animated UK/Europe radar and IR satellite loop) • Surface & Upper Air Charts • North Atlantic Charts