Wind speed data collected by Triton, or Formosat-7R, the nation’s first domestically built meteorological satellite, is being used to improve the accuracy of heavy rainfall forecasts, the Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) said on Friday.
Launched in October last year, Triton, also known as the Wind-Hunter satellite, was developed domestically from system design to integration testing, with more than half of its components being manufactured locally, Triton project manager Lin Chen-tsung (林辰宗) told a news conference.
“We are operating [Triton] primarily in several oceans and collecting data daily,” Lin said, adding that the satellite can gather approximately 30,000 to 40,000 sets of observation data every day, which can be used to generate 7,000 to 8,000 sets of wind speed data.
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan Space Agency
The data, including on low-speed wind and sea surface roughness, as well as delay-doppler maps (representation of signals received by satellites measuring reflections from the Earth’s surface), have been made available since May 31 for users of data from the Taiwan Analysis Center for COSMIC, a center jointly established by TASA and the Central Weather Administration (CWA), Lin said.
National Central University Department of Atmospheric Sciences head Yang Shu-chih (楊舒芝) shared preliminary research findings from Triton’s data, highlighting that it provides wind speed data for near-surface regions, filling gaps in radar observation and effectively improving the accuracy of rainfall forecasts.
“It is believed that this would greatly assist in the future forecasting of severe weather in Taiwan,” Yang said.
The CWA uses wind speed and wave height data from Triton as supplementary monitoring information for forecasts, CWA Administrator Cheng Chia-ping (程家平) said.
Cheng said he hopes the number of people using Triton’s data would increase after their official release, citing the example of data generated by Formosat-7, a constellation of six meteorological satellites launched in 2019 in cooperation with the US, which is used by 20,000 users in 92 countries.
TASA Director-General Wu Jong-shinn (吳宗信) said that the agency has experience in satellite development, but this is the first time Taiwan has developed a Global Navigation Satellite System-reflectometry (GNSS-R) payload.
Wu said that GNSS-R involves the analysis of the strength of signals reflected off the ocean surface to infer sea surface roughness and estimate wind speed using mathematical and physical principles.
Some organizations abroad have expressed their intention to collaborate with TASA, Wu said, adding that they want to develop applications and technologies to collect high-speed wind data from Triton.
Wu added that there are plans to include GNSS-R and GNSS radio occultation payloads in satellite missions, with the aim of launching one to two satellites each year.
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