Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
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weather and
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HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p81.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p79.

p80.

EUMETSAT immediately began participating in IPOMS. At the Council's third meeting in December, Morgan told delegates that EUMETSAT had been given observer status, and would have the option to apply to become a full member when its plans for contributing to an international polar orbiting system were clearer. NOAA's plan, he told the Council, was to launch the last of the currently planned series of independent NOAA polar satellites into morning orbit in 1994 and into an afternoon orbit in 1995. Instruments from France and the UK would be flown on the NOAA spacecraft. After 1995, the US intention was to fly meteorological instruments on NASA's polar platform in an afternoon orbit, leaving the morning orbit for the international community to fill in some way.

Realistically speaking, that gap was most likely to be filled by Europe which was rapidly developing its space sector. In addition to full 24-hour global coverage for Numerical Weather Prediction, short-range forecasting in western Europe also benefited most from polar data from the morning orbit because of the time the satellite crossed the Atlantic. Conditions over the Atlantic have a significant effect on the prediction of weather patterns over western Europe, and morning observations were more valuable for predicting the day's weather than those taken in the evening. The most likely scenario, therefore, was that operational meteorological instruments would be flown on ESA's polar platform, which was planned for launch into a morning orbit.

Having heard what Morgan had to say, the Council agreed that he should "continue to develop the activities necessary for EUMETSAT to become a full member of IPOMS". The endorsement involved nothing specific in terms of money or objectives, but was a quiet signal of EUMETSAT's willingness to adopt an international role on behalf of European meteorologists.

EUMETSAT gave an even stronger signal of that intention nearly a year later when, on the recommendation of its Policy Advisory Committee (PAC), the Council said that the Long Term Plan put forward in the Spring of 1987 was an accurate summary of the Organisation's aspirations. Meteorological observation from polar orbit was a significant element in the plan, which said: "It is proposed that EUMETSAT acts as a focus for the general European requirements for a meteorological satellite in polar orbit...".

By now, some three years after NASA first mooted polar platforms, the disadvantages of these platforms were becoming apparent, as the following quote from EUMETSAT's Long-Term Plan acknowledges: "A passive role is unthinkable, as, unlike Meteosat, there are many competing instruments involved and many compromises will be necessary between the different disciplines. There is already controversy concerning orbital heights and equator crossing times. "There will also be trade-offs concerning resource requirements and operational schedules."

The passage highlights one of the themes that was to raise its head repeatedly during the next six years, namely the difficulty of finding a compromise that satisfied all users of the polar platforms. The plan cautions: "There is a very real possibility of the meteorological community being drawn into a major financial commitment

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

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