From March to April, 2025, the world has been gripped by a handful of extreme weather and climate events, like tropical cyclone, typhoon, sand and dust storm, and forest fire which have exerted noticeable impacts on some countries. Let's review some of those extreme weather events worldwide through the lens of FENGYUN (FY) meteorological satellites.

Tropical cyclone Jude over the southern Indian Ocean made landfall on the eastern coast of Mozambique at 00:00 (UTC time) on March 10, 2025. Affected by Zude, heavy precipitation occurred in Madagascar and Mozambique. From 03:00 to 16:00 on March 10 (UTC time), FY-2H cloud image monitoring showed that Jude incurred heavy precipitation in the Mozambique Channel.

The monitoring image of FY-3D on March 22, 2025, indicated that there were still dense fire points in central mountainous areas of Republic of Korea, and the smoke and dust were obvious. There was a distinct smoke above the fire spots, which was spreading southeastward.

At 14:20 on March 28, 2025, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake occurred in Myanmar. On March 30, most portions of Myanmar saw clear weather. Affected by a heatwave, the daily maximum temperature in most portions of Myanmar ranged from 35 to 38 ℃. The surface temperature distribution in the earthquake-affected areas of Myanmar monitored by FY-3D displayed that on March 30, 2025, the surface temperature in most portions of Myanmar registered above 30℃, among which that in most portions of Mandalay Province, Magui Province and Irrawaddy Province was as high as 50 ℃.

On April 14, 2025, the strongest sandstorm of this year emerged in central and southern Iraq. The true-color composite animation captured by FY-4B demonstrated that at 12:30 (Universal Time) on April 14, a severe sandstorm gradually covered northeastern Saudi Arabia, central and southwestern Iraq, almost enveloping the entire territory of Iraq. The sand and dust composite animation of FY-4B/AGRI showed that at 8:30 (Universal Time) on April 14, a sand and duststorm occurred in the northern desert area of Saudi Arabia and then moved rapidly in the northeast direction.

The long-wave infrared enhanced cloud image animation of FY-4B displayed that at 00:00 (Universal Time) on April 17, 2025, typhoon Errol was located over the northwest ocean surface of Australia, with a distinct eye of a typhoon and an asymmetric spiral structure. At 3:00 on the same day, the eye of Errol disappeared and its intensity augmented. At 8:00, the distribution of the surrounding cloud system became more compact. The convective development of the main body of Errol was vigorous and the cloud system was dense.

In collaboration with National Satellite Meteorological Centre (National Centre for Space Weather) of the China Meteorological Administration

Editor: LIU Shuqiao