IRS

Infra-Red Sounder

Satellites

Meteosat Third Generation - Unit “S” (for sounding)

Status

Being defined - To be utilised from 2017 onward

Mission

Temperature/humidity sounding and wind profile derivation by tracking water vapour features

Instrument type

IR spectrometer/interferometer with large detector arrays for simultaneous sounding of more pixels

Coverage/cycle

Full disk in 60 min. Limited areas in correspondingly shorter time intervals

Resolution (s.s.p.)

4.0 km

Resources

Mass: … kg - Power: … W - Data rate: … Mbps

Spectral range (cm-1)

Spectral range (µm)

Spectral resolution

Radiometric accuracy (NEΔT)

700 - 1210 cm-1

14.3 - 8.26 µm

0.625 cm-1

0.2-0.5 K @ 280 K

1600 - 2175 cm-1

6.25 – 4.6 µm

0.625 cm-1

0.2-0.8 K @ 280 K