Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
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weather and
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HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p85.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p83.

p84.

NOAA rather than with ESA would have been impossible politically, a point which was made explicitly when the issue raised its head again later, but the fact that it was suggested by delegates is indicative of how dispiriting the situation appeared from EUMETSAT's perspective.

This was the situation at the end of 1988.

By the time of the tenth Council meeting in June 1989, ESA's, NASA's and NOAA's attitudes to polar orbiting satellites were clearer.

In the USA, NOAA had given up the idea of flying operational meteorological instruments on NASA's polar platforms and was returning to the idea of flying its own independent operational satellites whilst experimental instruments would fly on the NASA polar platforms.

Meanwhile ESA's Long-Term Plan did indeed envisage two series of polar orbiting satellites (POEM-MI, -M2 ... and -Nl, -N2...) similar to the strategy that EUMETSAT had found congenial in early 1988. The idea was that the M series of satellites would carry instruments for meteorology, ocean observations and climate monitoring and, once again, the second (N) series was envisaged as carrying instruments for land remote sensing.

Again, EUMETSAT welcomed the idea of a series of satellites.

As feared, though, ESA was committed only to launch the first of the M series - this launch would satisfy the Agency's "polar platform" commitment to the Space Station. Delegates to ESA had also made it clear that they thought ESA should pay only for development of satellites and instruments, and that user communities should pick up the bill for follow-on satellites. This was fine as far as it went, but which user community would pick up a bill for a joint meteorology-ocean-climate satellite? Only EUMETSAT was organised at a European level and its remit was operational satellite meteorology. As put forward in early 1989, EUMETSAT considered that the satellites proposed by ESA were too expensive and complex to allow the Organisation to pick up the bill alone for the subsequent satellites.

Also, ESA had no plans for a replacement satellite should there be a launch failure or failure of an important instrument. Even if all went well, ESA was quoting reliability figures of 80 per cent when, as an operational Organisation, EUMETSAT was looking for 99 per cent. Once again, the different aims of a research and development agency and an operational organisation were making themselves felt.

Overall, the situation was better than when the idea was to launch a so-called man-tended polar orbiter, but from EUMETSAT's perspective it was not ideal. In a document entitled, "EUMETSAT strategy for polar orbit", the Secretariat suggested a number of approaches to the tenth Council for dealing with the dilemmas posed by ESA's newest proposal. The document was the "detailed" plan that the Council had instructed the Director to develop during the eighth Council meeting a year earlier.

Of the options, the Secretariat recommended a joint ESA-EUMETSAT strategy. Under this scenario, which had approval from the highest levels in ESA, the Agency would pay the lion's share for development of the first satellite in a series which would have a combined meteorology-ocean-climate-monitoring payload.

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