Microtech Heralds Future of Weather Forecasting

Through UK Space Agency funding, STFC’s RAL Space has been granted government funding of £600,000 to develop a first-of-its-kind climate monitoring instrument which will be small enough to fly on board a nano-satellite. The Hyperspectral Microwave Sounder (HYMS) is set to transform the future of weather forecasting. It has achieved four times greater sensitivity than sounder technology on board the current generation of meteorological satellites and a hardware footprint 50-fold smaller.

Dr Manju Henry, Senior Systems Engineer and HYMS lead, RAL Space said: “Improving our understanding of the atmosphere’s temperature and moisture is one of the fundamental requirements to forecasting and mitigating the impacts of extreme weather events and climate change. We’re excited to have the opportunity to accelerate the development of the HYMS sensor. The sensor could radically improve weather forecasting capability and our understanding of our planet’s climate. This project will provide the foundations to launch a constellation of satellites to provide weather and climate data globally.”

Today, satellites provide over 90% of the data that goes into weather forecasting models and microwave sensors play a crucial role. The HYMS sensor offers over 1000 sampling channels versus just 24 channels on the current generation of weather satellites enabling more observations of the atmosphere at different altitudes.

As it is also smaller than existing technology, it can be flown in a constellation of multiple small satellites, giving a much more frequent view of the temperature and moisture of the atmosphere. Frequent observations will help to monitor rapidly developing extreme weather events like hurricanes and flooding, dramatically enhancing global weather forecasting, improving early warning and mitigation systems as well as climate monitoring.