The meteorological satellite spectral image is an effective tool for researches on meteorological science and environmental remote sensing science. Image registration is the basis for the application of the meteorological satellite spectral image data. In order to realize the registration of the satellite image and the template image, a new registration method based on the Fourier-Mellin transform is presented in this paper. Firstly, we use the global coastline vector map data to build a landmark template, which is a reference for the meteorological satellite spectral image registration. Secondly, we choose infrared sub-image of no cloud according to the cloud channel data, and extract the edges of the infrared image by Sobel operator. Finally, the affine transform model parameters between the landmark template and the satellite image are determined by the Fourier-Mellin transform, and thus the registration is realized. The proposed method is based on the curve matching in essence. It needs no feature point extraction, and can greatly simplify the process of registration. The experimental results using the infrared spectral data of the FY-2D meteorological satellite show that the method is robust and can reach a high speed and high accuracy.