Meteorology, Meteorological, History

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HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p76.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p74.

p75.

meteorological package to Europe. EUMETSAT is providing microwave humidity sounders to the USA. One Metop satellite will occupy the morning orbit, one NOAA satellite will occupy the afternoon orbit (see table 6, page 78). Together they will provide four global data sets daily to forecasters for both computerised predictions and short-term forecasting, in addition to other applications such as climate monitoring.

How it all began

As in the story of the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG), events prior to the existence of EUMETSAT are significant.

Polar orbiting meteorological satellites were, of course, first discussed in Europe in the late 1960s. But once ESA took over the French Meteosat project making it a European mission, the idea of a polar orbiter was put on the back burner - and the heat turned off. At that time, there was little need for Europe to develop a polar orbiting system because the USA made the data from its two civilian weather satellites freely available.

Then in 1982 the US government said that it would not supply two polar orbiting satellites indefinitely. By then it was clear that forecasts were more accurate when two satellites rather than one, with equator crossing times separated by several hours, provided data.

Considerable debate followed about what international effort could be made to provide or contribute to a second satellite to maintain the quality of satellite observations from polar orbit. The debate continued in desultory fashion until it was given political focus on 6 March 1984 in Washington DC. At that time a panel of experts on remote sensing from space met under the auspices of the Economic Summit of leading industrialised nations (then the G7) and recommended formation of the International Polar Orbiting Meteorological Satellite Group (lPOMS) to formulate a strategy for global meteorological observation from polar orbit. The G7 heads endorsed the proposal at a meeting in London that year.

During the rest of the 1980s, IPOMS meetings provided a framework within which meteorologists internationally reached a general consensus about the type of observations and instruments needed for weather satellites in polar orbit. Many of the participants in IPOMS were later also delegates to EUMETSAT or were on the staff of NOAA, ESA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

IPOMS met first at the end of November 1984 in Washington DC. The initial participants included Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Norway, the UK, the USA, the European Economic Community and ESA. EUMETSAT was not represented, because, although open by then for signature, its Convention had not yet been fully ratified.

One option open to IPOMS was to take advantage of the polar platforms which NASA had proposed should be an integral element of the International Space Station. The idea was that meteorological instruments could fly on these platforms. The polar platforms were to prove to be a thorn in the side of meteorologists on both sides of the Atlantic, most especially in Europe. Though they were to delay the development of European meteorological observation from polar orbit, the idea at the time

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