Natural Colour RGB
The Natural Colour RGB (Red, Green, Blue) makes use of three solar channels: NIR1.6, VIS0.8 and VIS0.6. In this colour scheme vegetation appears greenish because of its large reflectance in the VIS0.8 channel (the green beam) compared to the NIR1.6 (red beam) and VIS0.6 (blue beam) channels. Water clouds with small droplets have large reflectance at all three channels and hence appear whitish, while snow and ice clouds appears cyan because ice strongly absorbs in NIR1.6 (no red). Bare ground appears brown because of the larger reflectance in the NIR1.6 than at VIS0.6, and the ocean appears black because of the low reflectance in all three channels. From 1 June 2022, Meteosat-9 at 45.5° E is the prime satellite for the IODC service, replacing Meteosat-8 (located at 41.5° E while in operation).
Dust RGB
The Dust product is an RGB (Red, Green, Blue) composite based upon infrared channel data from the Meteosat Second Generation satellite. It is designed to monitor the evolution of dust storms during both day and night. But it is also useful for discrimination of cloud types (e.g. thin Cirrus detection) and detection of low level moisture. The Dust RGB is composed from data from a combination of the SEVIRI IR8.7, IR10.8 and IR12.0 channels. From 1 June 2022, Meteosat-9 at 45.5° E is the prime satellite for the IODC service, replacing Meteosat-8 (located at 41.5° E while in operation).
Precipitation rate at ground
Instantaneous precipitation maps over IODC area generated combining geostationary (GEO) IR images from operational geostationary satellites 'calibrated' by precipitation measurements from MW images on Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, processed soon after each acquisition of a new image from GEO. The blending algorithm ('Rapid Update’) generates precipitation estimates combining the equivalent blackbody temperatures (TBB) at 10.8 μm with rain rates from all available Passive MW measurements. A separate treatment is performed for convective precipitation: the morphologic information and the enhancement of precipitation estimate is done by the use of NEFODINA software.