2008-04-12

Archive of Meteorological Satellite Images Extended to 1978

Today we added meteorological satellite images between December 1978 to November 1979 into "Digital Typhoon," in addition to the current archive of meteorological satellite images since March 1981. This means the typhoon image collection now contains typhoon data of the 1979 typhoon season (partially). Now the satellite archive of "Digital Typhoon" covers following periods.

As shown above, the archive is not continuous, lacking data between December 1979 and February 1981 (in terms of visible imagery, the data is not available between December 1979 and February 1987). The digital data of this period, and the period of April 1978, when the first meteorological satellite "Himawari" started the observation, to November 1978 are not available and we still do not know where they are. We will add the data into the database as soon as we discover the data.

Because of this extension of the archive, "Digital Typhoon" now provides data of Typhoon Tip (197920), which is known as the world record of the minimum central pressure of 870hPa in 1979.

Please note that visible images in this addition have "bands" on the image. This is because data from the second detector among four detectors of the visible sensor of Himawari-1 are absent. So the band noise of these images are due to the trouble of the original data.

Brief History

  1. Data from May 1995 to Current : Archived since the opening of this Website around July 2003.
  2. Data from March 1981 to April 1995 : Added on July 19, 2006 (reference: Press Release).
  3. Data from December 1978 to November 1979 : Added on April 12, 2008.