Satellites project could help ‘save lives' and give extreme weather warnings
The Metop Second Generation project aims to make weather forecasting more accurate by providing more detailed information for prediction models which will feed into Met Éireann data.
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The first satellite, Metop-SG A1, will be launched from French Guiana on Wednesday and start collecting data on weather patterns next year.
The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMetSat) and the European Space Agency are leading the project, which will see six satellites sent into a low-earth orbit.
The project hopes to improve short-range and long-term forecasts, which will also help scientists monitor increasingly extreme weather across the world.
It's
#MetopSGA1
LAUNCH DAY! 🚀
Teams at the European Spaceport in Kourou are making final preparations for lift off at 21:37 local time (00:37 UTC, 02:37 CEST on August 13). 🛰️
Stay tuned with us for updates - night owls, watch the action live here:
https://t.co/GbzyWl5ci7
pic.twitter.com/uiFY2RLUZM
— EUMETSAT (@eumetsat)
August 12, 2025
Phil Evans, director general of EUMetSat, said the new satellites would help to save lives by predicting increasingly extreme weather before it happens.
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He said: 'Extreme weather has cost Europe hundreds of billions of euros and tens of thousands of lives over the past 40 years — storms like Boris, Daniel and Hans, record heatwaves and fierce wildfires are just the latest reminders.
'The launch of Metop-SG A1 is a major step forward in giving national weather services in our member states sharper tools to save lives, protect property and build resilience against the climate crisis.'
Once in use, the satellites could see improved forecasts for up to 10 days ahead in Europe and worldwide.
The data can also help short-range forecasts and enable experts to spot tell-tale signs of early storm development and other high-impact weather events, especially those at higher latitudes.
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On the satellite will be a tracker called the Copernicus Sentinel 5 mission, which will primarily be used for monitoring air quality and long-term climate monitoring.
The satellite will station itself about 800km above the Earth and complete one full orbit every 100 minutes, passing close to the north and south poles – enabling it to take images of the entire globe over the course of the day.
As well as imaging, the satellite will use other equipment like sounders in order to collect data on temperature, precipitation, clouds, winds, pollution and other factors to predict weather.
🤝There they stand.
📷First views of
#Ariane6
on the launch pad.
🚀 Flight
#VA264
will take Metop-SG-A1 and Copernicus Sentinel-5 to orbit
✅Launch readiness review: GO
☁️Weather looks good
📅Liftoff 13 August 02:37 CEST
🔴Watch live:
https://t.co/MucXusawJC
pic.twitter.com/xJ975sF47i
— ESA Space Transport (@ESA_transport)
August 12, 2025
This information will be fed back to stations and weather agencies such as Met Éireann.
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This will be 'absolutely vital' for weather forecasters, said Simon Keogh, head of space applications at the UK Met Office.
He said: 'We know how important satellite data is for forecast accuracy, with around a quarter of existing accuracy coming from this source.
'The next generation of these satellites is important not only for maintaining existing accuracy as old systems go offline, but also for enhancing observations for the next generation of weather forecasts.
'This project is absolutely vital as we make sure we can continue to deliver more accurate forecasts for the next five days and beyond.'
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The Guardian
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Why antibiotics are like fossil fuels
In 1954, just a few years after the widespread introduction of antibiotics, doctors were already aware of the problem of resistance. Natural selection meant that using these new medicines gave an advantage to the microbes that could survive the assault – and a treatment that worked today could become ineffective tomorrow. A British doctor put the challenge in military terms: 'We may run clean out of effective ammunition. Then how the bacteria and moulds will lord it.' More than 70 years later, that concern looks prescient. The UN has called antibiotic resistance 'one of the most urgent global health threats'. Researchers estimate that resistance already kills more than a million people a year, with that number forecast to grow. And new antibiotics are not being discovered fast enough; many that are essential today were discovered more than 60 years ago. The thing to remember is that antibiotics are quite unlike other medicines. Most drugs work by manipulating human biology: paracetamol relieves your headache by dampening the chemical signals of pain; caffeine blocks adenosine receptors and as a result prevents drowsiness taking hold. Antibiotics, meanwhile, target bacteria. And, because bacteria spread between people, the challenge of resistance is social: it's as if every time you took a painkiller for your headache, you increased the chance that somebody else might have to undergo an operation without anaesthetic. That makes resistance more than simply a technological problem. But like that British doctor in 1954, we still often talk as if it is: we need to invent new 'weapons' to better defend ourselves. What this framing overlooks is that the extraordinary power of antibiotics is not due to human ingenuity. In fact, the majority of them derive from substances originally made by bacteria and fungi, evolved millions of years ago in a process of microbial competition. This is where I can't help thinking about another natural resource that helped create the modern world but has also been dangerously overused: fossil fuels. Just as Earth's geological forces turned dead plants from the Carboniferous era into layers of coal and oil that we could burn for energy, so evolution created molecules that scientists in the 20th century were able to recruit to keep us alive. Both have offered an illusory promise of cheap, miraculous and never-ending power over nature – a promise that is now coming to an end. If we thought of antibiotics as the 'fossil fuels' of modern medicine, might that change how we use them? And could it help us think of ways to make the fight against life-threatening infections more sustainable? The antibiotic era is less than a century old. Alexander Fleming first noticed the activity of a strange mould against bacteria in 1928, but it wasn't until the late 1930s that the active ingredient – penicillin – was isolated. A daily dose was just 60mg, about the same as a pinch of salt. For several years it was so scarce it was worth more than gold. But after production was scaled up during the second world war, it ended up costing less than the bottle it came in. This abundance did more than tackle infectious diseases. Just as the energy from fossil fuels transformed society, antibiotics allowed the entire edifice of modern medicine to be built. Consider surgery: cutting people open and breaking the protective barrier of the skin gives bacteria the chance to swarm into the body's internal tissues. Before antibiotics, even the simplest procedures frequently resulted in fatal blood poisoning. After them, so much more became possible: heart surgery, intestinal surgery, transplantation. Then there's cancer: chemotherapy suppresses the immune system, making bacterial infections one of the most widespread complications of treatment. The effects of antibiotics have rippled out even further: they made factory farming possible, both by reducing disease among animals kept in close quarters, and by increasing their weight through complex effects on metabolism. They're one of the reasons for the huge increase in meat consumption since the 1950s, with all its concomitant welfare and environmental effects. Despite the crisis of resistance, antibiotics remain cheap compared with other medicines. Partly – as with fossil fuels – this is because the negative consequences of their use (so-called externalities) are not priced in. And like coal, oil and gas, antibiotics lead to pollution. One recent study estimated that 31% of the 40 most used antibiotics worldwide enter rivers. Once they're out there, they increase levels of resistance in environmental bacteria: one study of soil from the Netherlands showed that the incidence of some antibiotic-resistant genes had increased by more than 15 times since the 1970s. 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Just as we no longer burn coal without a thought for the consequences, the era of carefree antibiotic use is now firmly in the past. In both cases, the idea that there wouldn't be a reckoning was always an illusion. But as with our slow waking up to the reality of the climate crisis, coming to appreciate the limits of our love affair with antibiotics may ultimately be no bad thing. Liam Shaw is a biologist at the University of Oxford, and author of Dangerous Miracle (Bodley Head). Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande (Profile, £11.99) Infectious: Pathogens and How We Fight Them by John S Tregoning (Oneworld, £10.99) Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped our History by Dorothy H Crawford (Oxford, £12.49)
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an hour ago
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