The Atmospheric Motion Vector retrieval Scheme for Meteosat Second Generation

The advent of the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) provides many new opportunities for improved derivation of Atmospheric Motion Vectors (AMVs) from geostationary satellite data. MSG will provide full field of view imagery data every 15 min. with a sampling distance of 3 km, already improving the capabilities to derive AMVs. Another main improvement is the large range of available channels that amongst others incorporate two water vapour absorption channels at 6.3 and 7.2 um and a CO2 absorption channel. These channels will enable the application of the IR/WV and IR/CO2 ratioing methodologies, providing a more accurate estimate of the cloud heights. Further new channels like the 3.9 um channel and High Resolution Visible channel at 1 km resolution are expected to improve especially the tracking of low level cloud structure during night and day. This paper will present the MSG AMV retrieval scheme especially highlighting the changes with respect to the current Meteosat AMV scheme and the expected areas of improvements. Validation results of the new approach using current existing satellite data will also be provided. 1