Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
monit-
oring
weather and
climate
change

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p90.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p88.

p89.

technologies needed for flights after POEM-I, but they did not make a commitment to develop a small satellite to carry a meteorological payload after the launch of POEM-I.

EUMETSAT's delegates decided they needed time to digest the outcome of the meeting and that they would again meet in a special session to discuss the conclusions in detail. By the time of this meeting in the Spring of 1992, ESA was pressing EUMETSAT for a response to its invitation to fly on POEM-I. The Agency's deadline was 20 May 1992. EUMETSAT's delegates were divided. France considered that POEM-l was, in effect, a research programme and was not prepared to fund the project out of its meteorological service budget. All wanted an ESA commitment to develop a smaller operational meteorological satellite. In the end, the EUMETSAT delegates passed a Resolution accepting a free flight on POEM- I with the proviso that ESA would commit itself to developing a prototype of a small satellite for meteorology. EUMETSAT was prepared to make a financial contribution to development of the prototype. There was a majority in favour of the Resolution, with two absences (Turkey and Ireland), one abstention and one significant vote against - France.

As with the UK vote during the evolution of the MSG programme, the French vote was important as an indicator of POEM's likely fate. If there was to be a formal start to a programme to fly a meteorological payload on POEM-1, EUMETSAT would need a unanimous vote in favour. Clearly that unanimity would not be forthcoming. To underline its point, the French delegation formally recorded its reasons for voting against the Resolution, namely its desire that ESA commit to the development of a prototype meteorological satellite for operational use in polar orbit before France would consent to flight of a meteorological package on POEM-1.

Within months of this vote the ESA Executive proposed to split the POEM-1 mission into two smaller missions, one to be dedicated to meteorology and climate and the other to environmental monitoring. They were dubbed Metop and Envisat respectively. Luton wrote to Morgan asking whether EUMETSAT endorsed this new policy and would fly a meteorological package on Metop instead of POEM-1. At the twenty-first Council meeting in November 1992, the delegates obliged and subsequently the Agency's political masters endorsed the ESA Executive's proposal at a meeting in Granada in 1992.

This is the fulcrum around which the debate about a European contribution to operational meteorological observation from polar orbit turns. Prior to this breakthrough EUMETSAT and ESA had been deadlocked, each constrained by their respective remits and, in ESA's case, a prisoner to decisions made in the mid-1980s when the general philosophy governing space policy was very different than that which was beginning to emerge in the early 1990s.

At the twenty-first Council meeting held shortly before Granada an almost palpable sense of relief rises from the pages of the Council minutes when this breakthrough is recorded.

From this point forward the nature of the debate about the EPS changes completely. No longer is the story within the EUMETSAT Council documents one of frustration with 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

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