12hr Satellite image time resollution
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What is the current 12hr satellite image time resolution? I can get 10 mins resolution from Korea meteorological department for up to 18hrs to look at East Asia and Southeast Asia. I remember Windy's 12hr satellite image sequence was rather jerky with animation turned off. I turn off animation in order to examine cloud flows closely. This becomes very difficult to do on the low altitude clouds when they are overlapped by patches of higher altitude clouds and they can only be seen in the gaps between the latter but their motions become impossible to discern when the time resolution is much more than 10 mins. So before I pay for the premium subscription I would like to know what I will get.
Another question, what is the difference in subscriber obligation btwn the one-time purchase and the annual subscription? Can one cancel the annual subscription after say two years?
BTW, this is a great service, and I believe in paying for a good service that I use everyday to derive benefits from, especially for the unbelievably low price that it is charging. Just my personal opinion. Other users can have their own. -
K Korina moved this topic from Your Feedback and Suggestions on
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@hangInThere Hello, the satellite imagery updates every 5-10 minutes, depending on the location. You can access imagery for the last 12 months with the Satellite archive. You can turn off the Smooth satellite animation in settings for the 2hr Satellite loop to see what it will look like.
The annual subscription gets renewed every year unless you cancel it before the billing period ends.
The one-time purchase gives you access to Premium for one year only, it does not renew.
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@Korina I am currently using 2hr satellite images with animation turned off, and like the 10 mins resolution. My question was: with the 12hr and the archive, what is the time resolution there? Can you confirm they use 10 mins resolution?
My experience with the 12hr mode before it went behind paywall was it appeared to go on 30 mins resolution, whereas the 6hr mode uses 20 mins resolution. Neither is usable for multi-layer cloud motion detection.
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@hangInThere Hello, in the Satellite archive the resolution is 1 hour. In 12 hour loop it is 30 minutes and in 6hr it's 20-15 minutes depending on the location.
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@Korina Any chance the satellite time resolution will be improved to 10 minutes for archive/12hr/6hr? It's absolutely crucial for discerning low- and mid-altitude cloud movements within the narrow gaps between the high-altitude clouds. If you look at the satellite images over Sumatera, Malay Peninsula and Malacca Strait you will see how difficult it gets with 10 minutes resolution but still doable. With 1hr, it's totally impossible.
Right now, my stopgap solution is building my own satellite image sequence archive by taking screen recordings every day, once in the afternoon and once in early morning. -
@hangInThere There is currently no plan to do it.
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@Korina
I subscribed.
And then I looked at the Archive from Feb 28 at the South China Sea storm. Here: https://www.windy.com/-Satellite-satellite?satellite,2.592,106.589,6. You can see that the 1hr resolution made it very difficult to discern the motion of even the top clouds.
So, I suggest the archive improved its time resolution to improve its value to users. -
@hangInThere
For comparison, you can look at today's (March 3) 12hr satellite images over the same region. You will be able to see high altitude clouds spinning around an eye of cyclone.
Back to the Feb 28 Archive, I could make out spinning motion for certainty, let alone identity the eye. If for an important natural phenomenon like the cyclone's eye the Archive of satellite images could not help, it tells you the time resolution has been degraded too far.
Hope this is enough to convince you to bring at least 2 frame/hr to the Archive. -
@hangInThere
For comparison, you can look at today's (March 3) 12hr satellite images over the same region. You will be able to see high altitude clouds spinning around an eye of cyclone.
Back to the Feb 28 Archive, I could make out spinning motion for certainty, let alone identity the eye. If for an important natural phenomenon like the cyclone's eye the Archive of satellite images could not help, it tells you the time resolution has been degraded too far.
Hope this is enough to convince you to bring at least 2 frame/hr to the Archive. -
@hangInThere
Typo: I could >>NOT<< make out spinning motion ... -
@hangInThere Does it help if you just click and hold the slider and move it forward and backward? I get it's probably easier to just step through it but this might be a way to analyze motion.
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@Wheats
Won't work, b/c the time lapsed btwn frames is 1 hour, too long to tell where each piece of cloud has moved to.
Once you get onto Premium, I suggest you try looking at the South China Sea for Feb 28 and you will see the problem. -
@hangInThere As long as I let the full day load I can click and hold the slider to get images between 1hr increments. But you have to keeping hold the mouse button.
Either way, I agree, if they can make it so the steps are better than 1hr that would be awesome. -
I try to study the cloud movements over the southern Malay Peninsula on March 11, 2023, pulling satellite images from the archive. See image at 11AM and the very next image at 12PM (noon) below, for each of IR, Visible, and Blue.
You will see that it is virtually impossible to tell which ways the clouds move. Two reasons: (1) the cloud shape change too much during 1hr; (2) Narrow roll after roll of clouds.
It boils down to one factor: the time resolution. 1 hour is far too coarse.
I hope your developer rethink about it. The archive can be a lot more useful.
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@hangInThere Hi; from our point of view, 1hr resolution is sufficient at the moment. We don't rule out further improvements in the future, though.
