2 weeks Ago By John Wheeler
FARGO — This month marks the 65th anniversary of the launch of the first weather satellite, TIROS-1. TIROS stands for Television Infrared Observational Satellite. The first pictures were fuzzy and very short on detail, but TIROS-1 did reveal a typhoon over the Pacific that could otherwise have gone unnoticed until it struck land.
TIROS-1 only functioned for 78 days, but it changed weather forecasting forever by giving meteorologists the ability to identify and monitor storms located in remote locations.Over the last 65 years, satellite technology has greatly improved and weather satellites now take highly detailed pictures every five to 15 minutes over most of the world. In addition to highly detailed pictured of clouds, weather satellites also fill in some of the gaps in temperature and humidity data missed by weather balloons and can even detect lightning.
Satellite imagery is even used for climate change research, estimating world temperatures and precisely measuring ice loss at remote polar and high mountain locations.]]>.
