"Never done before": meteorologist on MTG-I2 leap to predict disasters

Panos Giannopoulos of Greece's National Meteorological Service has spent years reading satellite images. He tells Euronews what changes with the new Meteosat launched from French Guiana, the world's most advanced weather satellite. On 28 August, the MTG-I2 (Meteosat Third Generation Imager-2) satellite lifted off from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou aboard an Ariane 6 rocket, on the launcher's ninth mission and its first flight to a geostationary transfer orbit. With this launch, ESA and Eumetsat are completing the first operational trio in the Meteosat Third Generation constellation, positioned 36,000 kilometres above the equator to keep permanent watch on the weather over Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa. To understand what this satellite really changes, we spoke to someone who has spent decades interpreting satellite images in his daily work: Panos Giannopoulos, a meteorologist at the Hellenic National Meteorological Service (HNMS) and a weather presenter at SKAI Media Group. "When I started working, 25 years ago, we only had one image every 30 minutes, with three channels; it was the first generation of Meteosat, launched two decades ago," he recalls. The second generation, he explains, marked a clear difference: 12 channels and images every ten minutes (every five over Europe), which also made it possible to combine channels to detect fog, dust, volcanic ash and track the evolution of storms, from their birth until they dissipate. With the third generation, to which MTG-I2 belongs, the leap is even greater. The new satellite will scan the upper quadrant of the Earth, centred on Europe, every two and a half minutes, something which, according to Giannopoulos, "has never been achieved before anywhere in the world, not even in the United States". It is a change that, he admits, may outstrip human analytical capacity: "I do not know whether meteorologists on our own can make full use of all this information, but with the help of artificial intelligence, these images every 2.5 minutes could greatly improve very short-term forecasting." This new generation of satellites also includes a lightning detector, something Meteosat has never had before, capable of taking 1,000 samples per second in a very narrow band of the spectrum. And it does not arrive alone: MTG-S, the second satellite in the family, is already operating in orbit. Launched in 2025, it measures humidity and temperature profiles in the atmosphere. "Up to now we have relied mainly on weather balloons released every 12 hours from a limited number of locations. That satellite has been providing data for less than a year, and these are already being fed into global forecasting models," the meteorologist notes. MTG-I2 will still take around six months to complete commissioning before being integrated and calibrated alongside its two sister satellites. From then on, probably around April 2027, the three will operate as a single system. For Giannopoulos, the balance sheet is clear: "This third generation of Meteosat will have an impact both on very short-term forecasting (the next two or three hours) and on the usual one-to-ten-day range."