Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
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weather and
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HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p89.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p87.

p88.

Meteorological Communication Package) and a NOAA payload. These would share the platform with instruments for oceanic and atmospheric science. Work on the baseline option included evaluation of a ground segment, of instrumentation and preparatory work for cooperation with ESA and NOAA.

The ESA Executive drew up a strategy in line with the ideas that had found favour with EUMETSAT, and presented the ideas to the PB-EO. Immediately storm clouds gathered. ESA's suspicion that its delegates were not in the mood to fund a series of satellites proved accurate. The Programme Board reacted so ambiguously that the Chairman of EUMETSAT's STG was prompted to recommend to the fifteenth Council in June 1991 that the Organisation should continue to study "an ESA-independent solution". (At this time the ESA Executive was under increasing pressure from its Member States to cut costs and reorganise.)

By the end of October when the EUMETSAT Council met in a special session to decide what message it wanted to send to ESA ministers, it was clear that ESA and EUMETSAT were indeed back to square one. Jean-Marie Luton, who was now ESA's Director-General, attended the Council meeting and told delegates that he understood their disappointment and explained a number of ESA's decisions. In particular, he pointed out that the design of the polar platform could be adapted to carry a smaller payload. As a consequence, he said, a dedicated small satellite for meteorology would, in effect, be available to EUMETSAT which, after the launch of POEM-I, could take financial responsibility for this satellite as part of an ongoing operational mission in polar orbit.

EUMETSAT was not, however, an organisation set up to develop satellites, and therefore delegates said they needed ESA's commitment to develop this downsized polar platform. Without such a commitment EUMETSAT's delegates argued they would be in the position they had been in all along, paying for POEM-I without any guarantee that they could fly operational meteorological instruments in polar orbit on a continuous basis.

In the end delegates passed a Resolution at the special meeting that demonstrated their commitment to polar orbiting systems in general, but requested ESA to develop a prototype of a polar satellite system "in accordance with technical specifications to be mutually agreed" to enable data continuity beyond POEM-I. Funding for the satellite would be an ESA responsibility, but EUMETSAT was prepared to consider a fixed financial contribution and to formulate a long-term programme to ensure data continuity.

The Resolution, significantly, committed EUMETSAT to responsibility for the long-term programme in polar orbit. It was not, however, an endorsement of the POEM-I mission.

Delegates next met a month later, just a week after the ministerial meeting. They were generally encouraged by the positive attitude to Earth observation expressed by ministers. Nevertheless, the EPS did not seem to have advanced very much as a result of the meeting. With respect to POEM-I, the ministers had agreed to pay for the first phase of this work up to the end of 1992 and reiterated Luton's invitation of a free flight on POEM-I. The ministers also requested ESA's Director-General to produce a report during 1992 on the

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

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