On May 27, 2008, and November 5, 2010, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) sequentially launched two of its second-generation polar-orbiting environmental and meteorological satellites under the FengYun 3 (FY-3) series. The first one is referred to as FY-3A, and the second is referred to as FY-3B. With the capability to provide global, all-weather, multispectral, 3-D, and accurate observations of atmospheric, oceanic, and land surface states, the FY-3 satellite series can make valuable contributions to improving weather forecasts and natural-disaster and environmental monitoring in China, the rest of Asia, and the whole world.

The FY-3 satellite series has three missions, involving weather forecasting, climate monitoring, and natural-disaster monitoring. The first entails obtaining global temperature and humidity profiles and cloud, radiation, and other meteorological parameters to improve the accuracy of weather forecasts, particularly that of NWP products. The second involves global climate monitoring, including radiation balance, snow cover, sea surface temperature, greenhouse gases, and ozone monitoring for short-term climate-prediction research. The third entails global remote sensing and monitoring of natural, ecological, and environmental disaster events.

FY-3 satellites are sun-synchronous polar-orbiting environmental meteorological satellites with an orbit altitude of about 830 km. FY-3A is in a morning orbit, while FY-3B is in an afternoon orbit. Each satellite occupies a hexahedron-shaped volume of 4.4 m × 2.0 m × 2.0 m (see Fig. 3) and has a total weight of about 2500 kg. A solar panel is mounted on one side of the main satellite body, making the span length of the satellite about 10 m in flight. The attitude control of the satellite is three-axis stabilized with ameasuring precision of 50musing two onboard star sensors. Table I presents the major orbital parameters of the satellite.

All the functions of the FY-3A/B meteorological satellite ground application system were completed in November 2010. The computing platform of this system comprised a high performance computer cluster, a local area network storage serving as the data management center, and a server and storage device using a fiber-optic network for high-speed data exchange. This database system is based on distributed data management applications. The ground application system uses backup equipment to increase its stability and reliability, enhance its data-processing capabilities, and improve the service levels for product processing and monitoring. The FY-3-meteorological-satellite ground application system works 24 h for 365 days continuously, with a high level...

In comparison with the first generation FY-1 series, FY-3 has improved the global observation including optical imaging capacity from kilometre to hundred-metre resolution, passive microwave imaging, atmospheric temperature and moisture sounding, atmospheric chemistry remote sensing, and Earth radiation budget measurement with 11 payloads on board. Data from the FY-3 sounding system have been introduced into the ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System to assess the data quality and the influence of the data on analyses and forecasts. The analysis of first-guess departures has shown data with high quality overall. The FY-3 sounding data contribute positively to NWP model forecasting. The atmospheric chemistry mission provides a total ozone amount, ozon...