Satellite data - Analysis techniques and applications to meteorology

The history of meteorological satellites is traced, together with current instrumental and data analysis capabilities. Photographs taken from rockets launched in the late 1950s encouraged placing spacecraft such as the Nimbus I in sunsynchronous orbit beginning in 1964, and eventually the GOES, GMS, TIROS and Meteosat spacecraft into GEO in the 1970s. Visible, UV, IR and microwave sensors provide data on cloud patterns, wind fields, vertical temperature and humidity profiles and the surface temperature. Corrections have been developed in the data analyses programs to account for the atmospheric effects on upwelling radiation, fractional cloudiness, cloud-top heights and cloud contamination factors.