- 5 months ago
This is an in-depth Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next week and beyond 05/08/2025 –With another heatwave here we take a look at why and how hot it will be each day as well as the risk of thunder. We also cover the warm seas around the UK and a new satellite being launched. Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Alex Burkill.
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00:00It's fair to say last week's Deep Dive was a little chaotic at times, but I'm back and I have a plan.
00:08I have elbow pads on, so I'm taking this seriously and welcome along to this week's Deep Dive.
00:14Yes, I'm Alex Burkle, presenter, meteorologist and as always, I'm coming to you from our headquarters here in Exeter.
00:20And as always, make sure you hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, share this with anyone who you think might be interested in
00:27and leave some comments, leave some questions, because I will be looking at them later on.
00:32And if I don't answer them in the comments, we'll be looking at them in the Weather Studio Live when Aidan will be joining me on Friday.
00:38But let's get going. If you did watch last week's Deep Dive, along with all the calamity,
00:44you will have heard me talking about Tropical Storm Dexter and the potential for it to influence the weather across the UK.
00:50I also suggested that I take a look back and I like to come through all my promises.
00:55So let's do that. Let's look at the satellite imagery, which is what I have behind me from the last five days or so.
01:01If I just run it through. So this is Thursday and you can see the low that is Tropical Storm Dexter,
01:07or it was Tropical Storm Dexter by this point.
01:10It had gone through extra tropical transition as it heads towards the UK.
01:15Now, I talked about the potential for this feature to influence our weather,
01:19particularly through the latter part of the weekend just gone.
01:22Did that happen? Well, yes and no.
01:25Now, the forecast track on Tuesday had for Tropical Storm Dexter to come this way.
01:30It wasn't going to be a tropical storm by this point, as I mentioned,
01:33but it was going to come just to the northwest of the UK,
01:36a bit further away from us than Floris was, not as deep.
01:39And so not expected to bring particularly hazardous weather at all,
01:43but just a spell of wet weather.
01:45By Wednesday, the story changed a little bit.
01:48If you saw the 10-day trend, you would have seen a slightly different story.
01:51And this is kind of what happened.
01:53And as much as, actually, if I put the radar on, what you'll see is we went through Sunday.
01:58There is some wetter weather that pushed into parts of the northwest.
02:01But here's the low that is the remnants of Dexter and a separate feature kind of formed from Dexter.
02:10And it was this that brought the rain that pushed into parts of the northwest as we went through Sunday and into Monday as well.
02:18The low that is Dexter is actually still around at the moment.
02:23And if we just run through the beginning part of the week, and it's, well, it's somewhere around here.
02:28You can just about see that swirl of cloud.
02:30And this is important because if I put up our pressure pattern, and you can see it's not particularly deep low.
02:38It's quite a shallow feature because it's pushed a little bit further south.
02:41But nonetheless, it is influencing our weather because of the wind direction.
02:46I've got the jet stream on.
02:47You can see it kind of buckling a bit.
02:49But if I put our surface winds on instead, and the winds are going around the low, and so then we're dragging in some air from the south, as well as this, the other patterns going on.
03:02We're dragging some hot air in from the east as well.
03:04But it's from the south in particular where we have some pretty high temperatures coming in.
03:09So some hot air that's making its way in.
03:12And it's this that is causing the fact that we have a heat wave at the moment.
03:16You'll have no doubt heard we have some pretty high temperatures across the UK.
03:20I'll come on to our temperatures in a second.
03:22But why are we having a heat wave?
03:23Well, partly because of Dexter, partly because of where the air is coming from, and partly because we're generally under the influence of high pressure for the time being.
03:32And with that high pressure, lots of settled weather.
03:34And where we get the settled weather, that's going to bring some pretty decent warmth.
03:38The sun's still very strong at this time of year.
03:40And so we're going to see day-on-day heat rising, though exactly where we see the highest temperatures that will fluctuate.
03:47I'll come on to that in a second, like I said.
03:49But whilst we're here looking at this chart, I want to highlight the exceptional heat across other parts of Europe at the moment.
03:55So over North Africa, we've had a heat wave through the last week or so, really.
04:00And that hot air, as expected, has now pushed its way in across parts of Spain, Portugal, and even into France.
04:06Now, across Spain yesterday, the highest temperature was 43.8 Celsius, and there's a reasonable chance that today it's going to get into the mid-40s, so 45 Celsius.
04:16Portugal got to 42.8 yesterday, and in France it got to 42.4.
04:21So very hot.
04:23Not as hot here in the UK, but nonetheless, we are in a heat wave, and we're going to see some pretty high temperatures.
04:29So let's talk about those now, then.
04:32If I remember what chart I want to get up,
04:35I think it's this one, it wasn't, or this one maybe.
04:40Ah, I've forgotten which button I need to press.
04:42So that's awkward, but here we go.
04:45So here are our anomaly charts compared to average for the next couple of days.
04:52And a couple of things, you can see across pretty much the whole of the country,
04:56temperatures are well above average at the moment.
04:58Less so across parts of Scotland, the far north of Scotland are very close to average.
05:01Some parts of towards like Lincolnshire, Yorkshire are close to average as well.
05:05But most places are pretty high.
05:08It's actually across parts of the Midlands and southern England that we're seeing the highest temperatures today.
05:12They're already in the low 30s, so pretty hot.
05:15But nonetheless, it's very warm everywhere.
05:19Then, like I said, exactly where we see the highest temperatures changes a little bit through the next few days.
05:24By Wednesday, we'll start to see something a bit fresher, more comfortable across some southern, western parts.
05:29A bit more cloud pushing in.
05:31Meanwhile, across eastern parts, it's probably going to be even hotter tomorrow than it was today.
05:38We're at absolute highs across the country, maybe ever so slightly down.
05:42But we're still looking at 33, 34 Celsius perhaps.
05:46And then by Thursday, a bit fresher, cooler perhaps for many places down the eastern side.
05:51Still pretty warm or still pretty hot, to be honest.
05:54High 20s, we may just about scrape into the low 30s, around a 50% chance, I'd say, on Thursday of somewhere getting to 30 Celsius.
06:03And then we see the building again as we go into Friday, particularly across parts of the south, southwest.
06:08And so temperatures more likely to be in the low 30s across some parts as we go into Friday.
06:14So some very hot weather still to come through this period.
06:18Just a brief reminder of our heatwave threshold map, and you can see where temperatures need to exceed certain temperatures in order to be a heatwave.
06:28Remember, for it to be a heatwave, we need three consecutive days of the place exceeding its threshold.
06:33For around London and other southeastern parts, many places are 28, highlighted by the deep red.
06:41The bright red highlighting where the threshold is 27, the deep pink, 26, and then the rest of the country, Devon, Cornwall, much of Wales, and much of northern England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, the threshold is 25.
06:53Lots of places are exceeding those thresholds at the moment.
06:56We've already had a few days where we've seen temperatures exceed it.
06:59Like I said, today we've already got temperatures in excess of 30 at the time of recording, and they're going to get even warmer through the next few hours.
07:06And yesterday we had temperatures in the low 30s as well.
07:10So we are in a heatwave, and it's going to go on for a little while yet.
07:14It's going to be a relatively prolonged one.
07:16It's heatwave 4.0, if you will, because we have had four heatwaves now this year.
07:21I'll come on to a bit how unusual that is in a second.
07:25But let's get back to the weather across the UK through the next few days.
07:30And because, as we often see with some very warm, humid air that we have at the moment, as we often see with the heat, there is the risk of some significant thunderstorms developing.
07:43Now, as we go through tonight, like I said, there's a bit of cloud coming in across parts of the southwest, and that could bring a few spots of rain.
07:50There are also some showers tomorrow across parts of Scotland in particular, and there's the potential that some of these showers could get a bit heavier as we go through later tomorrow.
08:00More so overnight tomorrow and into Thursday, there's a potential for some hefty, maybe thundery downpours, even a few showers dotted around elsewhere.
08:07But it's particularly across Scotland, where we have the risk of some thundery downpours as we go through Wednesday night into Thursday.
08:13So watch out for that, because we may need to issue a warning for those if we get good confidence on where we're most likely to see those hefty showers.
08:22Otherwise, Thursday is a bit showery in quite a few places, but it's really across Scotland where we have the greatest risk.
08:29Look at those rainfall rates. They're pretty intense.
08:32Now, at this lead time, what are we talking, 24, no, wait, 48 hours ahead?
08:37You can't be that precise with the position of thundery downpours this far ahead.
08:43It's very difficult by their very nature.
08:45Showers, they're hit and miss. They're scattered. They're difficult to pinpoint.
08:49And so we need to take this, not with a pinch of salt, a bit more than that, maybe a spoonful of salt, perhaps.
08:54But we need to just be aware that there is the potential for some heavy thundery downpours to develop across parts of Scotland in particular as we go through Thursday in particular.
09:09So just to recap, and if I look ahead to this coming Wednesday, this is our three-hour rainfall totals.
09:18And if we just look at Scotland, because that's where we're likely to see the greatest rainfall rates, and you can see it's highlighting one shower just over that part of northwest Scotland, which could be pretty intense.
09:30I think if I look at it, it's talking more than 50 millimetres in three hours.
09:34Now, that's a pretty heavy downpour that we could get because, I mean, the same three hours, but a lot of that could come in just an hour or so.
09:41That's enough to cause some significant impacts.
09:43But the position of this, I wouldn't take that literally at this stage.
09:48It could be pretty much anywhere within the zone, and whether or not we see those heavy rainfall rates still to be determined.
09:55And we could still see some hefty showers as we go through Wednesday night into Thursday.
10:00And then for Thursday, I just need to skip to our extended model because that gives a better guide for what we can expect through Thursday, I'd say.
10:07And let's go back here.
10:11And it's, again, highlighting some pretty high rainfall rates.
10:14Actually, I'm going to look back at just this one and see if it covers.
10:19Oh, it does cover.
10:20Yeah, you can see as we go through Thursday morning, even some really heavy, perhaps thundery downpours developing.
10:27This is suggesting across northern parts of Scotland, but not necessarily.
10:32It could be a bit further south across some central areas.
10:34And so watch out for that.
10:36We don't have any warnings at the moment.
10:38Thunderstorm warnings are notoriously difficult at long lead times.
10:42You'd have to give such a broad area of where the risk of thunder and intense downpours exists that it wouldn't be particularly useful.
10:51So we'll wait a little bit longer.
10:53Maybe tomorrow we might issue one more so.
10:55Well, yeah, possibly tomorrow we might need to look at issuing a thunderstorm warning for parts of Scotland,
11:00either Wednesday night into Thursday or perhaps more likely on Thursday when we confirm up a little bit more on the detail,
11:07particularly exactly where it's most likely to see those heavy, thundery downpours.
11:12Otherwise, in other places, seeing some showers at times, really, as we go through Thursday.
11:18But they're not as intense as the ones I'm expecting across parts of Scotland.
11:22And they're pretty hit to miss.
11:23Most places having a lot of fine sunny weather.
11:25And like I've already gone through, temperatures, yeah, in the east on Wednesday, they're pretty high or very high and then slightly lower by Thursday.
11:32But then on Friday, well, Friday looks like a fine day for the majority of the country.
11:37A few showers across Scotland, but not as intense as the showers that we're going to see on Thursday.
11:42And a good deal of sunshine, particularly across England and Wales.
11:46And that's why we're seeing the temperatures rising a bit.
11:48There's the potential for some showery bursts to push into the southwest as we go through into this Saturday.
11:54And a bit more cloud down the eastern side of the country, perhaps.
11:59And that could bring some drizzly rain.
12:00But on the whole, it's looking largely fine and still pretty hot.
12:04And it's a similar story as we go into Sunday as well.
12:07So lots of fine weather to come.
12:08Lots of hot weather still.
12:10Temperatures most days were somewhere likely to be in the low 30s.
12:14And so the heat wave continues for a little while yet.
12:17For more information about what we can expect looking further ahead, well, check out the 10-day trend.
12:22Honor will be bringing that to you tomorrow.
12:25Or you can check out the 14-day outlook, which I'll be putting on our app later on.
12:29Oh, actually, whilst we're on that topic, looking a little bit further ahead, I do have a Hohmoller chart.
12:34So this is showing what's going on with our upper air pattern.
12:36Here's the UK marked by this cross.
12:38And this is currently the UK.
12:41And then we're looking further into the future as we go down and going west and east from left to right.
12:47And what you can see is the orange is indicating high pressure, generally the dominant story at the moment.
12:51It does drift a little bit towards the east through the next couple of days before returning again as we go towards kind of the weekend and beginning part of next week.
13:01Before, I think, as we go through next week, early signs are that we're going to see the high pressure that's bringing lots of settled weather gradually pushing a bit further north.
13:11And that could allow for some hefty showers to come up across southern parts.
13:16But the progress of that high pressure drifting northwards is still a bit uncertain.
13:22And if it does push, it could clear quite far north.
13:24And then later next week, we end up in a bit more of a mobile pattern.
13:27But I think at this stage, it's pretty equal likelihood as to whether the high keeps around or whether or not we change that more mobile changeable pattern that is possible.
13:38So one to watch, one to pay attention to.
13:43So what else do I want to talk about?
13:45OK, let's look back at summer so far.
13:48So I've already mentioned in last week's deep dive that we are pretty much, if we look at mean temperatures so far this summer, we're on course to be for it to be the warmest summer on record.
14:02We're not quite there at the moment.
14:03And obviously, we have what?
14:04Where are we now?
14:05The 12th.
14:06Just under three weeks left of summer to go.
14:08So still a lot could change.
14:10But based on where we're at currently this summer and based on the fact that we have more hot weather to come through the next few days and whilst it probably won't be as hot next week as it is currently, it's still looking, if anything, around or a little bit above average temperature wise.
14:26So no real cooler spell as such.
14:29And so likelihood is that it is going to end up as being the warmest summer on record.
14:34But I just wanted to delve into that a little bit more in detail because, as I said, this is heat wave four of the year that we're currently in.
14:44And that's kind of unusual.
14:46It's definitely not unheard of.
14:47But it's a bit unusual for us to reach these heat wave thresholds four individual times.
14:53And I wanted to break it down a little bit.
14:55So there are a few things to unpack here.
14:57So, yes, we have had a fair few hot spells this year.
15:02We've had 13 or including today, 14 days so far this year where temperatures have exceeded 30 Celsius sometime this year.
15:12And to compare that, well, last year we only had 10.
15:14So we've already had a fair few more.
15:16And, you know, tomorrow, the next few days likely to get above 30 Celsius.
15:21So we're going to get a few more.
15:22So quite a high number compared to last year.
15:24But if you look back at 1995, well, in that year we had 34 days with temperatures peaking above 30 Celsius somewhere in the UK.
15:36So we're nowhere near that number.
15:38But interestingly, the graph that I have behind me illustrates our mean temperature each day compared to the average for that day based on data going back decades.
15:50And what you can see is, yes, we've had some hot spells.
15:53Our heat waves, you can see them with our peaks.
15:55They're the three previous ones earlier on this summer.
15:58And in between the heat waves, it's not been as hot, obviously.
16:01But it's never really been especially cool in as much as, yes, June started off a fair bit cooler than average.
16:10And then we have had the odd cooler spell.
16:13But really, we're only talking one, maybe two days of temperatures below average.
16:17And they're only a degree or so below average.
16:21Meanwhile, the majority of the season has either been hot in a heat wave or it's been a fair few degrees above average,
16:29or at least the warmer side of average, which is why when we look at the season as a whole at the end of the season,
16:35it's very likely to come up being the hottest on record because of the fact that just our warmth or temperatures have just generally been above average,
16:45which makes perfect sense when I say it out loud.
16:48Let's break it down a bit further.
16:50Why is this happening?
16:50Well, if you think back to spring, when it was exceptionally dry,
16:56and so then the ground didn't have that moisture embedded within it.
17:00And so it took less energy to heat up.
17:02And so it took less for us to get some pretty high temperatures.
17:06And then once you've had one heat wave, I mean, weather is variable, it's changeable.
17:11And so that doesn't necessarily increase the likelihood of getting another weather setup that allows for more hot weather.
17:18But what it does mean is when you get that hot weather, it's more likely to be more intense because the ground is dry.
17:25There's that underlying base heat within the land.
17:29And so it will take less for those temperatures to get so high, so uncomfortably high from many people's point of view.
17:35But also worth bearing in mind, yes, we've had four hot spells temperatures today again back into the mid 30s.
17:41But the highest temperature we've only recorded so far this year is 35.8.
17:45Now, that's higher than we've had in the last couple of years.
17:49I mean, last year's highest temperature was 34.8, so it's a degree higher than that.
17:52And it was 33 point something the year before.
17:55But obviously in 2022, we recorded 40 Celsius, and we're nowhere near that hot.
18:00And also in 2019, we had 38.7, so rounded 39 Celsius.
18:05We're not as hot as that.
18:06So we have had four heat waves already, but they haven't been record-breakingly hot in terms of the absolute maximum temperatures that we've had.
18:17They're several degrees away from that.
18:19But it's just the fact through this season, just the general trend, it's always been pretty warm.
18:25And even if we've had some cooler days, they've been only slightly cooler than average and pretty short-lived, any cooler spells as well.
18:32So I just wanted to highlight that because I found it pretty interesting.
18:36Talking of warmth and heat, it is having a knock-on effect to our sea surface temperatures.
18:41Now, we're all aware that our climate is changing.
18:44Our climate is getting warmer.
18:45And we're seeing that with our sea surface temperatures as well.
18:48This graph, using Met Office data but plotted by the BBC, so thank you to them for letting us use it,
18:56shows us the sea surface temperatures around the UK for the first seven months of the year since 1980.
19:03And you can see, as we often see with a lot of our output, an upward trend.
19:07And so temperatures are getting warmer.
19:10In fact, for the first seven months of the year so far, the temperatures are around 0.2 degrees higher than the record.
19:18Records, like I say, dating back to 1980.
19:21And the fact that we're seeing this warming trend is having a knock-on effect on many things.
19:26It's also self-fulfilling in as much as a warmer sea holds less carbon.
19:31And so then that's going to lead to increasing amounts of climate change because carbon is a big problem.
19:38And then also, a warmer sea then leads to less likely to see your cool sea breezes developing,
19:45which then means when we get any hot spells, they're likely to be even hotter.
19:50And so the knock-on effect, it keeps feeding itself.
19:53And so then we're likely to see things getting more extreme.
19:56We're likely to see this trend going up.
19:58Now, you may say, oh, that's lovely.
20:00I can go for a swim in the sea and it's not going to be too cool.
20:03And whilst that is true, it is going to be warmer than it would have been previously.
20:08There are some major negative impacts.
20:11I mean, I've already mentioned the ones of the knock-on effect on climate change as well.
20:14But there's also the effect that it's having on marine life.
20:19COD, for example, having to migrate further north to get to the colder seas there
20:24because it likes a colder sea than we're now currently able to give it around some parts of the UK.
20:30And so we're seeing COD numbers decreasing.
20:32Other species are also having to move away.
20:34But we are also seeing an increase in some other species, certain type of jellyfish, octopuses.
20:40No, it's octopuses.
20:42Some octopuses are becoming more common around the British seas as well.
20:46And also bluefin tuna.
20:47So we're seeing the species around the UK in the sea changing because of this rise in sea surface temperatures
20:55that we're seeing through the last, well, through the last decades when we look back at this chart.
21:01So that's another thing.
21:04And then another thing to cover is the fact that it is the Perseid meteor shower at the moment.
21:11Now, this meteor shower happens every year around this time of the year.
21:15And it's already been going since, I think, late July.
21:19But the peak will be through tonight into tomorrow morning.
21:23So the greatest chance of seeing it will be through the early hours of tomorrow morning,
21:28from around 11 o'clock tonight all the way until dawn tomorrow.
21:32And so how's the weather looking?
21:33Well, I've already darted over it quite quickly.
21:35But let's just recap what the weather's doing through the early hours of tomorrow.
21:39And actually, for much of the country, yes, there are a few showers across parts of Scotland,
21:45but for much of us, it's looking dry.
21:47And there's a lot of clear skies around, the exception being across parts of the far southwest of Wales,
21:52southwest England, also along the south coast of England,
21:55and perhaps some murkiness around some North Sea coastal parts as well.
21:59But the majority of places will have often clear skies.
22:02So pretty good viewing for the Perseid meteor shower.
22:06That being said, worth bearing in mind, we had a full moon only a few days ago.
22:10And so the brightness from that is going to make it a little bit harder to see.
22:15But it's the Perseid meteor shower.
22:16It's usually the most dramatic of the year.
22:19This year, we're looking at around 100 meteors per hour.
22:23Now, other years can be more active.
22:27There's already some anticipation ahead of the 2028 meteor shower,
22:31which could be a meteor storm.
22:32So we could even have more meteors than that.
22:34We're talking 150, 200 meteors per hour.
22:37Not quite that high amount at the moment.
22:40But nonetheless, 100 or so meteors likely to be spotted per hour.
22:46And why does it happen?
22:47Well, it's because the Earth is travelling through,
22:50moves through the tail of the comet that is Swift-Tuttle.
22:54And as it moves through, then the little bits, the meteoroids, if you will,
22:59they pass through the atmosphere and then they burn up.
23:02So the meteoroids, they're only small.
23:04We're talking about the size of a grain of sand.
23:06But they're moving incredibly fast.
23:08We're talking, I think it's around 133,000 miles per hour.
23:12They're incredibly fast.
23:13And then they reach the atmosphere.
23:14Then they burn up.
23:15And then you get your meteor because they reach temperatures of around 1,600 Celsius.
23:21So really hot.
23:23And then they burn up.
23:25As I mentioned, they're usually only about the size of a grain of sand.
23:29So pretty small.
23:30So don't usually meet or reach the ground.
23:32But if they do, that's when you get your meteorite.
23:35But pretty unlikely.
23:36So head out.
23:37Head out to somewhere dark.
23:40Hopefully you've got clear skies here in the southwest.
23:42It's not looking so promising.
23:43So I may not attempt it.
23:45But head somewhere dark.
23:46Let your eyes adjust to the darkness.
23:49Look up at the sky.
23:51And then look out for it.
23:52Try and avoid the moon.
23:53But what you can also keep an eye out for are two very bright stars.
23:57Well, they won't be stars.
23:58They're going to be Jupiter and Venus.
24:01They're very bright in the sky at the moment.
24:03And they're also super close.
24:04They're only going to be around a degree apart in the sky.
24:08So very close.
24:08So whilst you're looking up for the meteor shower,
24:11also have a look up for Jupiter and Venus.
24:15Whilst we're on the topic of space,
24:17tomorrow a new weather satellite is being launched.
24:21And to find out more about it,
24:22I'm joined by Tom Blackmore,
24:24Manager of Space Data Products and Systems.
24:27Tom, thank you so much for joining me on this week's Deep Dive.
24:31Why are we launching a new weather satellite?
24:34We already have lots giving us really important information.
24:37But what's important about this new one?
24:39This new satellite is the first of a series of six satellites,
24:43which is a next generation polar orbiting system.
24:47And it's being launched by UMETSAT and ESA.
24:50And this is going to be providing us with measurements of our atmosphere
24:55going forward into the 2040s.
24:57Okay, so like 20-odd years?
25:00Yes, over 20 years of measurements from these satellites.
25:04And why do we need a new satellite when we already have existing ones?
25:08The existing European polar orbiter satellites are reaching the end of their lives
25:12and gradually being retired.
25:14So we need to continue the measurements from space,
25:18which are absolutely vital for our forecasts.
25:21So we need these new satellites to continue to provide the observations well into the future.
25:27And you say the old one's being retired.
25:30What happens to it then?
25:31Does it continue floating around in the sky?
25:33They retain enough fuel in the satellite to be able to gradually de-orbit it.
25:37So they boost it a little way towards the Earth's atmosphere
25:40and the orbit will gradually decline over a period of about 20 years or so.
25:45And then it will eventually burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.
25:47So that means it won't stay in orbit with the potential of breaking up
25:51and contributing to space debris.
25:54But it's going to take around 20 years for it to come towards the atmosphere and break up.
25:58Is that right?
25:59Yeah, the first generation series of these weren't originally designed
26:02with this in mind.
26:03So we've become more and more aware of the problem of space debris over recent years.
26:09So it's now good practice to be able to get your satellite out of its active orbit
26:14and burn it up in the atmosphere if possible.
26:17The new generation have been designed with this in mind.
26:20So these are going to be the first European satellites to have active de-orbiting
26:24and have a controlled re-entry.
26:25So they've got a lot more fuel dedicated to pushing the satellite back into the Earth's atmosphere.
26:30So that can be done much more quickly than 20 years.
26:34And it will mean the satellites moved out of any risk of breaking up
26:39and harming any other satellites much more quickly.
26:41I suppose that's the problem if we leave them orbiting around is, yeah,
26:45they could break up and then bits of debris hit something else more important at that point.
26:49Absolutely, yeah.
26:49And then that causes lots of problems.
26:51So it's really interesting that we've now learned that and thought about it
26:55and come up with a solution that's even better than the current one.
26:59Now, here's a picture of the satellite that's being launched tomorrow.
27:03And tell me the different bits of it.
27:05What kind of information is it going to be giving us?
27:08We've got six instruments on board this satellite and they're all labelled on here.
27:14I'll go through a few of them maybe a bit more in a minute.
27:16First of all, to point out, the main satellite body here is kind of housing all the instruments
27:23and has a main rocket engine on it which propels the satellite into space.
27:28There's also small thrusters on that satellite body for maintaining the positioning of the satellite
27:34and maintaining it in orbit.
27:35So when it's orbiting, it will get adjusted a little bit to make sure it's going round in the correct place.
27:40Going round and pointing in the right direction
27:42and making sure all the instruments are pointing down where they need to be
27:45and to make sure it maintains in its correct orbit.
27:48So it's orbiting about 800 kilometres above the Earth's surface
27:51or will be once it's in orbit.
27:54Circling the Earth, the orbit's about 100 minutes in duration.
27:59That's really quick, isn't it?
28:01Yeah, it's really quick.
28:02And as it orbits, the Earth will spin underneath it.
28:04So over the course of a day, it will be able to take measurements over the entire surface of the planet.
28:12Wow.
28:13What are the other bits of the satellite then?
28:17We've got some solar panels which provide some energy as well as the propellant on board to the satellite.
28:24So it provides some electrical energy which helps run the instruments.
28:28And then we've got the six instruments.
28:30So there's quite a number, too many to go through all of them,
28:33but the majority of them are what are known as sounding instruments.
28:37So they take measurements of the atmosphere at lots of different levels
28:41so they can provide a kind of a profile of what's going on in our atmosphere,
28:45which we need for our forecasting models.
28:48And some of these bits were built in the UK, that's right?
28:51Yes.
28:52The microwave sounder instrument here, MWS, that was built by Airbus in the UK.
28:57Some of the components of the infrared sounder, YASI-NG, were built by UK industry.
29:04And the propulsion system for the entire satellite was also built by Airbus UK.
29:09But it's not being launched in the UK, that's right.
29:12It's, well, here's an image of it being assembled, ready for launch, is that right?
29:17Yeah, this is the satellite, as you can see here with the kind of gold foil on the outside of it,
29:23with the solar panels all folded up to make sure it can fit into the nose of the rocket.
29:30So what we can see here is the encapsulation.
29:32So the two sides of the rocket enclose over the satellite,
29:37sealing it up from any outside influence until it's safely into space.
29:42Oh, I see.
29:43So these are the two halves of a rocket, and inside it, we're protecting and launching the satellite.
29:48And it closes up a bit like an Easter egg, with a very special treat inside.
29:54I see.
29:55And it looks huge, you can see by the size of the people next to it.
29:59And where is this launch happening?
30:01The launch is happening in French Guiana, so in South America.
30:06This is where we have a European launch facility.
30:09And, yeah, this is only going to be the third launch of this particular series of European rockets, called Ariane 6.
30:20So, yeah, this is the nose cone of the rocket here, with the satellite.
30:24And that will be put on top of the rest of the launcher, which will take the satellite safely into space.
30:30And it's being launched in the early hours of tomorrow morning, is that right?
30:34Yes, yes. Unless there's any kind of adverse weather conditions or anything that prevents the launch or any technical issues, it should be launched tomorrow morning.
30:41Great. And finally, before I let you go, just how much work has it taken for you, for, I'm assuming a huge team of people,
30:50how much work has it taken for us to get to the stage where this new satellite can launch?
30:54We've been involved in the planning stages of this satellite for decades.
31:00Our colleagues in International have been involved in all the agreements to get funding for the satellites.
31:06And then we've had various people in the science development teams who have helped to shape what the satellite will look like
31:13and what are the vital measurements that we need to have.
31:16So, yeah, it's a long process, but these satellites will continue to provide data for us, hopefully well into the 2040s and potentially even longer.
31:24These satellites have a nominal lifetime of about seven and a half years, but we find in practice that they last a lot longer than that
31:30because they are such well-calibrated, well-designed instruments.
31:34And it just means that we can get information from them and get the most value for money from them.
31:39And I suppose the environment up in space is pretty clean in as much as there's, you know, there's less to interfere with it and cause problems
31:49unless we get a random piece of debris coming through, like you mentioned.
31:52So, they're pretty secure.
31:55It's really exciting.
31:56And so just to reiterate, it is new technology.
32:00It's new.
32:01It's going to give us even better information than we're already getting.
32:05But I guess the biggest reason that we're launching it is because the current satellites, they're coming to the end of their lifespan.
32:11So, we need to replace them.
32:12Absolutely, yeah.
32:13The instruments on board are all brand new.
32:16Some of them have heritage with the instruments on the first generation
32:19and they're going to provide that continuity of those measurement types.
32:23But there's, as I said, six instruments on this A satellite.
32:26There's actually going to be a second satellite launched in 2026, a B satellite with another four instruments on board
32:31because they just couldn't fit all the instruments onto one satellite.
32:33So, different four instruments.
32:34Yeah, different four instruments.
32:36So, then we've got this set of ten instruments providing all these different measurements,
32:42lots of different information about our atmosphere.
32:44And we know from the previous generation that these are vital for our numerical weather prediction models.
32:50They provide 25% of the impact of all observations that we use just from these European Metops satellites.
32:58So, just these, this group of satellites alone provides a quarter of the observation data that feeds into our models.
33:05A quarter of the impact in our models, yeah.
33:07I see, we're taking into account all the land observations, et cetera, that we have.
33:12Yeah, aircraft and land and all the other satellites that we use in our models.
33:17So, they are really invaluable.
33:18They're the single most invaluable source of observations that we have based on our impact studies that we've done.
33:25Amazing.
33:25Thank you so much for explaining that to me, Tom.
33:27It's been really interesting talking to you.
33:31Well, what a deep dive.
33:32Hopefully, it was slightly less chaotic than last week's.
33:35Let me know in the comments.
33:36Also, any questions that you have for me or questions that you have for Tom, I can pass them on and I'll try and get the answers.
33:42If we don't answer them in the comments today, we can maybe look at them in the Weather Studio Live on Friday.
33:47It will be Aidan and me back on Friday.
33:49It's on a tomorrow covering the 10-day trend.
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