Meteorology, Meteorological, History

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HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p31

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p29.

p30.

conditions - of a ten-year project for operational satellites. Germany, which would be footing 25 per cent of the bill but had an industrial return of only ten per cent, wanted the costs reduced and membership of EUMETSAT to extend beyond the original eight.

Eventually ESA invited the foreign ministries of 18 European nations to participate in an intergovernmental conference to discuss an operational system of meteorological satellites. On 28 and 29 January 1981, 16 of these met in Paris. France and Switzerland were ready to commit funds. Others agreed in principle to the formation of an operational body. All agreed that Meteosat was valuable. The early warning of dangerous weather in the Mediterranean, the Bay of Biscay and the North Sea was acknowledged. Sweden, though it received little direct benefit to national forecasts, could see Meteosat's value to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF established in 1975). Preliminary results from GARP showed that without the continuous observations of the intertropical region, available only from geostationary orbit, it was not possible to do good medium-range (10-14 days) forecasting.

At the end of two days, the Conference set up the MOP working group to look in detail at possible organisational infrastructures and satellite technology. Mason distilled the conference's consensus on the institutional framework as being that EUMETSAT should have its own legal personality, but draw on the services of an existing international organisation. EUMETSAT, said the delegates, should be as small as possible.

The working group assigned the technical task to a sub-group headed by Ken Stewart. John Morgan, later to become EUMETSAT's first Director, took over this job when Stewart retired. Their job was completed soon and without controversy (see table I, on page 24 for MOP overview).

The second sub-group, chaired by Roger Mittner, Director of the French National Meteorological Service, had a tougher task. Basing its work on the Conference consensus, the group examined the ECMWF in Shinfield Park near Reading, UK, as a potential base. This proposal was stopped in its tracks when the German government said in June 1981 that EUMETSAT should not have its own legal personality.

A few months later, the German government informed ESA that its decision about participation in EUMETSAT would not be made until 1982. Krige reports that the cause was that the Ministry of Finance was unhappy about Germany's low level of industrial return - only ten per cent compared with an investment of 25 per cent. It was not until July 1982 that the German cabinet agreed to participate in the MOP.

When the working group resumed its task, Tillmann Mohr, then working at the German Weather Service, was the Chairman. In September, Germany agreed that EUMETSAT should have its own legal personality with the authority to decide which organisation should operate the satellites. A Convention was drafted within the working group and the responsibilities and size of EUMETSAT's Secretariat outlined.

"When the intergovernmental conference reconvened in Paris in March 1983, once again under the Chairmanship of Sir John Mason, it

SEE ALSO| |

1. Meteorologists shed political shackles, a review of Declan Murphy's history of the first 25 years of EUMETSAT (2011), by Helen Gavaghan.

2. An interview in 2010 with Dr Tillman Mohr, a special advisor to the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organisation, in Science, People & Politics.

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Contents

Preface

Foreword

Introduction

Ch.1

Ch.2

Ch.3

Ch.4

Ch.5

Ch.6

Ch.7

Ch.8

The History of EUMETSAT is available in English and French from EUMETSAT©.
First printed 2001. ISBN 92-9110-040-4

Eumetsat meteorology meteorological artificial satellites
European Space Agency weather climate policy politics history