From March to April, 2026, the world was plagued by some extreme weather and climate events, such as gale, sand and dust storm, and tropical cyclone, which exerted conspicuous impacts on some countries. Let's review some of these global extreme weather events through the lens of China's FENGYUN (FY) meteorological satellites.

Figure 1. At 02:30 UTC on March 7, 2026, the true-color image from Medium Resolution Spectral Imager (MERSI)  onboard FY-3H meteorological satellite captured gale winds and cold cloud systems off the eastern coastline of Russia, together with snow cover over Sakhalin Island and sea ice along its shorelines. Cloud streets generated by convection stretch in long parallel bands across the southern Sea of Okhotsk in a northwest-to-southeast orientation.

Figure 2. Affected by a cyclone, a sand and dust storm wall stretching over 1,500 kilometers emerged across the Sahara Desert in North Africa, impacting countries including Morocco, Algeria, Mali and Mauritania. The true-color image captured by FY-3H at 14:30 UTC on March 31, 2026 shows that this weather event continued to develop and drifted westward into the Atlantic Ocean. With the transport and deposition of dust, nutrients will be supplied to Atlantic waters.

Figure 3. In April 2026, A23a, once the world's largest iceberg over the South Atlantic, completed its final calving, with its remaining area falling below the threshold for iceberg designation. After breaking off from the ice shelf in 1986 and roaming the ocean for 40 years, A23a was officially decommissioned in April 2026. China's FY meteorological satellites witnessed the final journey of this "white giant" in the Antarctic iceberg decay zone.Since 2025, its evolution has been irregular: small-scale edge collapse alternated with massive fragmentation in an unpredictable pattern. Notably, its final collapse in late March 2026 occurred through central fracturing, instead of continuous erosion at the edges. This may be attributed to changes in internal structure, underwater geometry and melting intensity.In addition, satellite true-color imagery captured a rapid color shift of A23a's surface from white to blue in mid-to-late December 2025.

Figure 4. On April 5, 2026, two tropical cyclones, Maila and Vaianu, formed successively over the South Pacific.At 07:00 UTC on April 17, true-color image captured from FY-3F indicated that the center of Tropical Cyclone Maila was located over the ocean 1,340 kilometers northeast of Australia, with a well-organized structure and vigorous convective clouds surrounding its center and northwestern quadrant. The center of Tropical Cyclone Vaianu lay 2,360 kilometers east-northeast of Australia and 260 kilometers west of Fiji. It featured a distinct spiral structure and a clear eye, with intense convection well-developed around its center, as well as in its northeastern and southern sectors.

In collaboration with National Satellite Meteorological Centre (NSMC) of the China Meteorological Administration

Image source: NSMC

Planner/Editor: LIU Shuqiao