| Instrument | Status/
Accuracy | Instrument Description | Measurement Technology | Timeline |
ABI
Advanced Baseline Imager | Operational
| Detects clouds, cloud properties, water vapour, land and sea surface temperatures, dust, aerosols, volcanic ash, fires, total ozone, snow and ice cover, vegetation index. | n/a |  |
AGRI
Advanced Geosynchronous Radiation Imager | Operational
| A multiple channel radiation imager, one of the primary instruments aboard FY-4. Technically featured by a precisely designed two-mirror structure, capable of accurate and flexible sensing in two dimensions, and minute-level fast sector scanning. Frequent Earth imaging over 14 bands with off-axis three reflections of the primary optic system. On-board black body available for IR calibrations at very short time intervals. | n/a | |
AVHRR/3
Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer/3 | Operational
| Measurements of land and sea surface temperature, cloud cover, snow and ice cover, soil moisture and vegetation indices. Data also used for volcanic eruption monitoring. | n/a | |
C-Band SAR
C-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar | Operational
| Marine core services, land monitoring and emergency services. Monitoring sea ice zones and arctic environment. Surveillance of marine environment, monitoring land surface motion risks, mapping of land surfaces (forest, water and soil, agriculture), mapping in support of humanitarian aid in crisis situations. | n/a | |
ETM+
Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus | Operational
| Measures surface radiance and emittance, land cover state, and change (e.g., vegetation type). Used as multi-purpose imagery for land applications. | n/a | |
HSI-2 (HJ-2A)
Hyper Spectrum Imager 2 | Operational
| Hyperspectral measurements for environment and disaster management operations. | n/a | |
Imager
Imager | Operational
| Measures cloud cover, atmospheric radiance, winds, atmospheric stability, rainfall estimates. Used to provide severe storm warnings/ monitoring day and night (type, amount, storm features). | n/a | |
MicroDragon SMI & TPI
MicroDragon SMI & TPI | Operational
| Designed to observe ocean color for assessing coastal water quality and locate living resources | n/a | |
MODIS
MODerate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer | Operational
| Data on biological and physical processes on the surface of the Earth and in the lower atmosphere, and on global dynamics. Surface temperatures of land and ocean, chlorophyll fluorescence, land cover measurements, cloud cover (day and night). | n/a | |
MSU-MR
Low-resolution multispectral scanning imager-radiometer | Operational
| Parameters of clouds, snow, ice and land cover, vegetation, surface temperature, fire detection. | n/a | |
OLCI
Ocean and Land Colour Imager | Operational
| Marine and land services. | n/a | |
OLI
Operational Land Imager | Operational
| Measures surface radiance, land cover state, and change (e.g., vegetation type). Used as multi-purpose imagery for land applications. | n/a | |
OLI-2
Operational Land Imager 2 | Operational
| Measures surface radiance, land cover state, and change (e.g., vegetation type). Used as multi-purpose imagery for land applications. | n/a | |
PALSAR-2
Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar-2 | Operational
| Disaster monitoring, land monitoring, agricultural monitoring, natural resource exploration, global forest monitoring, potential use and interferometry. | n/a | |
SAR (RADARSAT-2)
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) C band | Operational
| All-weather images of ocean, ice and land surfaces. Used for monitoring of coastal zones, polar ice, sea ice, sea state, geological features, vegetation and land surface processes. | n/a | |
SAR (RCM)
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) C band | Operational
| All-weather, C-band data to support ecosystem monitoring, maritime surveillance and disaster management. | n/a | |
SAR-L
L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar | Operational
| Land, ocean, emergencies, soil moisture, interferometry, others. | n/a | |
SGLI
Second-generation Global Imager | Operational
+/-30 % | Medium resolution multi-spectral imaging of land, ocean and atmosphere. SGLI-VNR is an optical sensor capable of multi-channel nadir observation at wavelengths from near-UV to NIR and forward or backward polarization observation at red and near infrared wavelengths (Push-broom scanning). SGLI-IRS is an optical sensor capable of multi-channel nadir observation at wavelengths from SWIR to TIR wavelengths (Cross-track scanning). | n/a | |
Vegetation
Vegetation | Operational
| Global coverage every two days for uses including climate impact assessments, surface water resource management, agricultural monitoring, and food security estimates. | n/a | |
VIIRS
Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite | Operational
| Global observations of land, ocean, and atmosphere parameters: cloud/weather imagery, sea-surface temperature, ocean colour, land surface vegetation indices. | n/a | |
VISSR-2
Stretched Visible and Infrared Spin Scan Radiometer-2 | Operational
| Meteorological. | n/a | |
X-Band SAR
X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar | Operational
| High resolution images for monitoring of land surface and coastal processes and for agricultural, geological and hydrological applications. | n/a | |
GLIMR Instrument
Geosynchronous Littoral Imaging and Monitoring Radiometer (GLIMR) | Being developed
| GLIMR will make observations of rapidly evolving phytoplankton dynamics and hazards such as Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) and oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and other selected coastal regions of North and South America | n/a | |
OCI
Ocean Color Instrument | Being developed
| Ocean colour spectrometer for measuring ocean leaving light which contains information on biological components. | n/a | |
OPS (Pan, Multi)
Wide-swath and high-resolution optical imager (Pan, Multi) | Being developed
| Disaster monitoring, map generation, land monitoring, agricultural monitoring, natural resource exploration, forest monitoring. | n/a | |
PALSAR-3
Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar-3 | Being developed
| Disaster monitoring, land monitoring, agricultural monitoring, natural resource exploration, global forest monitoring, potential use and interferometry. | n/a | |
Advanced MSU-MR
Advanced Multispectral scanning imager-radiometer | Proposed
| Parameters of clouds, snow, ice and land cover, vegetation, surface temperature, fire detection. | n/a | |
L-Band SAR
L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar | Proposed
| Global observation of dynamic processes in the bio-, cryo-, geo- and hydrosphere. | n/a | |
MAC (HSC)
High Sensitivity Camera | Proposed
| Low light detection applications | n/a | |
WSAR
WSAR | Proposed
| High resolution radar measurements of land and ocean features. | n/a | |
MI
Meteorological Imager | No longer operational
| Continuous monitoring capability for the near real-time generation of high-resolution meteorological products and long-term change analysis of sea surface temperature and cloud coverage. Ceased operations from 1 April 2020. | n/a | |