Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
monit-
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weather and
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HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p60.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p57.

p58 (from page 58)

meteorological products, some delegations, notably the UK and France, questioned whether the production of meteorological products should be undertaken centrally. They argued that National Meteorological Services had the expertise to undertake the task and, anyway, it would be better if meteorological work were performed in an operational setting.

The remaining delegates preferred to see a centralised facility - here politics entered the debate. Many of the delegates from so-called smaller countries (i.e. those with a Gross National Product (GNP) which made them comparatively smaller contributors) were concerned that if the MPEF were to be located at one of the National Meteorological Services, that country would benefit disproportionately from the whole Organisation's investment.

Germany was opposed to a distributed solution for a number of financial and political reasons (on one occasion Tillmann Mohr had to hand over his chairmanship of a meeting of the Policy Advisory Committee (PAC) during a debate on the topic because he needed to represent Germany politically). On a financial level, Germany argued that a distributed system would be too costly because of the additional communication costs and the management complexity. The political concern related to the location of the headquarters. A strict interpretation of the agreement that had led delegates at the first Council meeting to locate the headquarters of EUMETSAT in Germany did not preclude locating elements of EUMETSAT elsewhere, but it seems that Germany did see the distributed proposal as potentially breaking the spirit of the agreement.

On occasions, Italy voted with the UK and France during discussions on the location of the MPEF, but this was, in fact, because of a separate debate about the location of the ground station.

Delegates remained divided in the Spring of 1992, despite an unequivocal claim by the Secretariat that studies showed, "for a better technical performance, lower risk, higher reliability, simpler management, reduced operational manpower, shorter development schedule and minimum costs, a fully co-located ground segment was the best choice". This assertion was based on many studies.

The breakthrough came during the October 1992 meeting of the PAC when Claude Pastre, the French delegate, and Bizzarro Bizzarri, the Italian delegate, each made crucial observations during the second day of intensive discussion. Pastre pointed out that the National Meteorological Services used only the cloud track winds from among the products produced by the MIEC. Yet, at the same time, they were exploring the data to find new meteorological products, and these products were not shared.

Bizzarri's observation was that the new satellite systems would generate even more data and that it should be possible to apply these data to meet the needs of specialised fields of meteorology, for example nowcasting (see table 3). He argued that a centralised system would be underresourced for the development of the wide range of products for many fields of application and said that a distributed concept would be more efficient and practical.

The unspoken point being made here is that if Member States insisted on a completely centralised facility, they would not reap the full

The next text page in the hard copy of the book is page 60
Page 59 carries early thinking - at a time selected by Helen Gavaghan, who was under contract as history consultant - about Satellite Application Facilities.

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.

eChapter| |TOP

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