Abstract:On 11 December 2016, China launched FY4A, a newgeneration geostationary meteorological satellite, whose high temporal and spatial resolution can enhance the monitoring applications in aeronautical meteorology. In order to better apply the various observation products of FY4A satellite, this paper uses the Python language to realize decoding and visualizing of the 2km and 4km resolution full discs, the visible and infrared images over China, and 7.8km resolution lightning monitoring data detected by the AGRI observation instrument of FY4A satellite, and compares the resulted satellite images with those from the website of the National Satellite Meteorological Center that are open to public. The results show that the two sorts of images are consistent and can be used in aeronautical meteorological services. The Python language syntax is concise and has fast reading speed for satellite HDF and NC format data. Python’s Numpy toolkit based on matrix operation can quickly process satellite observation data. The various projection methods in the Basemap library are available for operational application, which is worthy of promotion.