Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
monit-
oring
weather and
climate
change

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p82.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p80.

p81.

without being able to determine such fundamental parameters as orbital height and operational scenario."

Given the anticipated difficulties of flying an operational meteorological mission on a polar platform, Morgan urged consideration of "a free-flying conventional satellite" dedicated to meteorology. Some years later when EUMETSAT and ESA were having problems finding a mutually acceptable way forward, this idea was resurrected.

Having given an overview of the flight options, the Long-Term Plan then considered instrumentation' pointing out that Europe's participation to date in polar orbiting satellites had been at a national level (France and the UK) and that other European nations had told IPOMS of their interest in supplying additional instrumentation. It was unclear in April 1987 whether these instruments would be supplied nationally or by EUMETSAT, and whether they would be supplied via IPOMS or in response to one of the space agencies issuing an announcement of opportunity for flight on one of the polar platforms.

After the Council meeting, the PAC and the Scientific and Technical Group (STG) examined the Long-Term Plan. The PAC viewed the debate on polar platforms with misgiving and suggested that EUMETSAT "should follow the development cautiously and review its position once a firm ESA programme is documented". This was the first of several times that the PAC advocated a wait-and-see policy during the early years in the development of the EPS. In the meantime, said the PAC, EUMETSAT should establish its functional requirements, that is, what tasks it wished to accomplish from polar orbit. The STG undertook this task and reviewed the mission aims and instruments proposed by IPOMS. By September 1987 when the Council next met, the PAC's cautious approach to the polar platform was seen to be justified. ESA and NASA had not reached agreement on the definition for polar platforms, though there was some hope that the ESA Council meeting at ministerial level, scheduled for November in The Hague, might prepare the ground for such an agreement in 1988. Whilst high policy was still uncertain there seemed little chance that EUMETSAT would be able to resolve practical issues such as orbital height or equatorial crossing times.

Also, launch of the polar platforms had slipped from 1995 to 1997. This was particularly troubling to the international meteorological community because of the possibility of a gap in global satellite observations. Remember, NOAA had told IPOMS the previous year that its plans were to launch its final satellite into morning orbit in 1994.

Despite this uncertainty, the EUMETSAT Council endorsed the Long-Term Plan during its fifth meeting, including its call for the establishment of EUMETSAT's mission requirements by the end of 1989 for weather satellites in both polar and geostationary orbit. In the case of polar orbiters, a common list of instruments was to be established in collaboration with NOAA and in the context of IPOMS. The Council did not, however, make a formal commitment to a polar system in the way that it did to the MSG during this meeting.

Within a few months the issue of EUMETSAT's policy on polar systems was, from a meteor-

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

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