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This page provides a part of Himawari-8 data since July 7, 2015, and Himawari-9, which is waiting for backup. Geostationary Meteorological Satellites: Himawari, GOES, GMS and MTSAT and Satellite Images (Photographs) provides the basic information, and Himawari-8 Watching (in Japanese) provides other latest information.
"Target area" observation of Himawari-8 / Himawari-9 enables high-frequency observation of every 2.5 minutes for the region of about 1,000km. Because the satellite allows agile change of the observation region, it is suitable for keeping track of moving phenomena such as typhoons. However, it has a fundamental limitation that when multiple typhoons are active, only one of them can be observed.
To solve this problem, we take the best of two sources, Target area and Japan area. We use the "Target area" as the basic data source, but we switch the data source to "Japan area" when images of the latter is better than that of the former. Then we make a time lapse movie of the life cycle of typhoons by connecting these images.
These time lapse movies are created by a special map projection after matching the image center with the typhoon center defined by JMA. This has the effect of "stabilizer" on the raw target area images, so the motion of the typhoon is more smoother than the original.
In addition, the map projection method used in Digital Typhoon, namely Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection, allows us to create images where the center of the typhoon is always located at the center of the image, and the area of the typhoon is always correct irrespective of the geographical location of the typhoon.
'Visible' and 'True Color' can observe clouds only when the sun sheds light. On the other hand, 'Infrared' can observe clouds without the light of the sun. Moreover, 'Visible (eye)' is created for the period where the maximum wind of the typhoon is equal or above 85 knots (category Very Strong Typhoon and above).
Visible | Visible (large) | Visible (eye) | Infrared | |
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Radius on the earth | 650km | 650km | 170km | 650km |
Number of pixels | 650x650 | 2600x2600 | 650x650 | 650x650 |
Spatial resolution | About 2km | About 0.5km | About 0.5km | About 2km |
Play speed | 1 second = about 1 hour | 1 second = about 1 hour | 1 second = about 25 minutes | 1 second = about 1 hour |
Himawari-8 / Himawari-9 data is obtained from NICT Science Cloud Himawari Satellite Project operated by National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT).
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