Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
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weather and
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HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p88.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p86.

p87.

and expensive for this. Attitudes seemed to be hardening. The problems can be traced to the different remits of the two organisations. ESA, very basically, was and is driven by research and development not operations. In addition, ESA was trying to satisfy a much broader community of Earth observation scientists than operational meteorologists alone.

Despite this difference it was clear that the two would have to find a way to work together. Like a double-barrel shotgun at a wedding, political expediency and financial necessity were urging ESA and EUMETSAT into one another's arms. This was underlined during the twelfth Council meeting in June 1990. Delegates discussed the costs the Secretariat had produced of all proposed future programmes for the next 20 years. This document assumed that EUMETSAT's needs in polar orbit would be met by a series of independent free-flying satellites. The costs were high and delegates, clearly unhappy with the price tag, said that EUMETSAT needed to look at cooperation with ESA in order to reduce the cost.

The same meeting also saw a more hopeful mood emerge and the minutes show that the forced union between ESA and EUMETSAT might prosper because EUMETSAT was beginning to feel listened to. Even the French delegation, which had most reservations about the ESA plans, said that it had "some satisfaction over comments made by ESA indicating awareness of EUMETSAT concerns".

So delegates passed a Resolution urging negotiations with ESA and instructed the Director to inform ESA that EUMETSAT would consider use of the polar platform if its operational requirements could be met. In the meantime, EUMETSAT agreed to continue seeking alternative ways to achieve its aims.

In the week following this Council meeting a joint ESA and EUMETSAT working group met to try to iron out their technical differences. It was the first of a series of constructive meetings. They concluded that the cheapest solution for EUMETSAT was to avoid all development costs and share launch costs of a series of ESA polar platforms. In the past, EUMETSAT had found this solution unacceptable because it made no provision for a launch failure. The working group overcame this difficulty by suggesting that POEM-M2 should be readied for a launch 18 months after POEM-Ml and that EUMETSAT develop a small complementary satellite to form the third in a series carrying operational meteorological payloads, thus providing data continuity. In addition, there was provision for an advanced sounder, an instrument that the meteorologists were keen to see included, given the descoping that the MSG project was undergoing.

The PAC was cautiously optimistic about the joint working group's strategy. Encouraged by these developments, delegates at the thirteenth Council meeting in November 1990 agreed that the Secretariat should continue preliminary activities at a low level on developing a technical, legal, financial and programmatic framework for the EPS. The work was intended to enable EUMETSAT to decide at the end of 1992 what the full programme should consist of. The baseline technical option for EPS was the ESA polar platform (now known as POEM) carrying a EUMETSAT meteorological payload (Microwave Humidity Sounder and

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