Black and white weather maps are received every 30 minutes by CSP , in Torino, from the METEOSAT satellite. Each image is 512x512 pixels with 64 gray levels resulting in 262.144 bytes of data. The latest infrared image is available from CSP while the latest images in the visible spectrum can be accessed from the University of Edinburgh.

All the images are automatically transferred from CSP, via the Internet network and using the FTP protocol, to CRS4, in Cagliari, where they are processed using colormap normalization and equalization. Resulting images have a greater contrast and are thus more readable and allow further processing.

Images are then artificially colored using a colored filter image, each pixel value of the filter is added to the original gray level value image. The resulting images are colored, high contrast, RGB images.

                            TRANSFORMATION PROCESS

    RAW GRAY -->   EQUALIZED GRAY --> COLOR FILTER  --> COLOR IMAGE

Every day, shortly after midnight when all the images of the current day have been received and processed, an automated process compress them to create an MPEG movie.

MPEG compression allows enough reduction in movies size so that they can be easily transmitted over slow speed connections. Movies are produced in 512x512 and 256x256 pixel widths and are archived for later retrieval and examination.

                          WEATHER MOVIES ARCHIVE

The MPEG weather movies archive is freely accessible via WWW, but if you are in a hurry you might want to access the latest MeteoSat data page which also includes data from the STACK Micro Computer User Association of the Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands).
You can also get this data via FTP through our server on ftp.crs4.it in the mpeg/meteo directory.

If you are interested in meteorogical data there are some other sites that offer services related to meteorogical data processing that you might want to browse.

This page has been presented at S.Miniato Conference "WWW and beyond..." (14-18 March 1994) and is based on the results of a collaboration between the following institutes :

CSP - Centro Supercalcolo Piemonte (Torino, Italy)

CRS4 - Centro di Ricerca, Sviluppo e Studi Superiori in Sardegna (Cagliari, Italy)

To obtain more informations please contact :