The On-Orbit Performance of FY-3E in an Early Morning Orbit

Abstract

The polar-orbiting meteorological satellites operating in an observing system composed of early morning (EM), mid-morning (AM), and afternoon (PM) orbits are extremely important to global Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP). Following the proposal of World Meteorological Organization (WMO), China Meteorological Administration (CMA) launched Fengyun 3E (FY-3E), the world’s first EM-orbit meteorological satellite for civil use, on 5 July 2021. With 11 scientific instruments onboard, FY-3E is capable of providing atmospheric sounding, low light imaging, sea surface wind detection, and space weather monitoring. Six months after launch, we have finished the post-launch test for all the payloads. This paper presents the FY-3E data obtained during the 6-month test period, their performance, and key geophysical products driven ready for downstream applications. Experiments have been conducted to better disseminate the sounding data within the 6-hour NWP assimilation window. Further efforts have been made to benefit data application for severe weather monitoring, diurnal cycle of earth data, quasi-continuous sun monitoring for space weather, and climate research.

A Machine Learning Method to Retrieve Global Rainfall and Snowfall Rates From the Passive Microwave Observations of FY‐3E

“…The 118 GHz oxygen absorption channel in the MWHS is used for vertical detection of atmospheric temperature; however, studies have also shown that this channel has great potential for detecting ice clouds and snowfall (Bauer & Mugnai, 2003). The MWHS has a swath of 2,500 km, an instantaneous field of view (IFOV) angle of 2.0°(89 and 118 GHz) and 1.1°(166 and 183 GHz), and spatial resolutions of 30 km (89 and 118 GHz) and 15 km (166 and 183 GHz) at nadir (Zhang et al, 2022(Zhang et al, , 2024. The MWTS has a swath of 2,600 km, an IFOV angle of 2.2°, and a spatial resolution of 33 km at nadir.…”

“…The MWTS has a swath of 2,600 km, an IFOV angle of 2.2°, and a spatial resolution of 33 km at nadir. It is noticed that MWHS and MWTS are cross-track scanning radiometer varies along the scan direction (Zhang et al, 2022(Zhang et al, , 2024. The PMW observations of the MWHS and MWTS are used as input data to retrieve rainfall/snowfall.…”

“…The 150 GHz window of the MWHS is changed to 166 GHz, which can better detect snowfall signals. In addition to the channel changes, both the MWTS and the MWHS significantly improve the sensitivity and calibration accuracy (Zhang et al, 2022(Zhang et al, , 2024. With the increase in the number of channels, more information about rainfall and snowfall is captured in these channels.…”

First PWV Retrieval Using MERSI‐LL Onboard FY‐3E and Cross Validation With Co‐Platform Occultation and Ground GNSS

“…As one of the representatives, Fengyun 3E (FY‐3E), the world's first early morning (EM) orbit meteorological remote sensing satellite for civil use, was launched on 5 July 2021 (Shao, 2022; P. Zhang et al., 2024). The primary goal of the FY‐3E mission, equipped with 11 scientific instruments, is to provide global numerical weather prediction (NWP) models with infrared (IR) and microwave soundings (C. Zhang et al., 2022; P. Zhang et al., 2022).…”