Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
monit-
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weather and
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HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p95.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p93.

p94.

the goal must be known. Thus for EUMETSAT, the goal was an operational series of satellites that would provide uninterrupted service as economically as was consistent with fulfilling meteorological aims. ESA's goal was to undertake research and development that kept Europe at the cutting edge of space science and technology, both industrially and scientifically. What was cost-effective for EUMETSAT was not necessarily cost-effective for ESA, and vice versa. Thus the apparently obvious answer was not necessarily the right answer.

Yet the two organisations needed one another. EUMETSAT needed ESA's space expertise in the early days, and ESA needed EUMETSAT's commitment to its projects as part of the Agency's justification for its Earth observation policy. The two, therefore, had to work out a mutually acceptable way of cooperating that allowed each to fulfil its respective remits. EUMETSAT's records, and this account, show the struggle from the Organisation's perspective (no doubt the same struggle is recorded in ESA's records).

It is as a result of, and in the context of, the struggles between EUMETSAT and ESA that EUMETSAT took two of its big policy decisions. First, the Long-Term Management Policy, which was EUMETSAT's first formal, comprehensive statement about the role it intended to play in both the space and ground segments. Secondly, disagreement with ESA prompted EUMETSAT to decide that it would operate its own satellites.

As the preceding chapters show, EUMETSAT's internal debate about the distribution of power, as well as the Organisation's struggle to define its relationship with ESA, took place in the context of debates about programmes for geostationary and polar orbit. And programme development was, of course, the third major task occupying the Council and Secretariat during the early years.

EUMETSAT's first shot at deciding what kind of Organisation it would be and what programmes it would support was the Long-Term Plan presented by the Director to the Council in April 1987. This plan took the middle road. It envisaged that EUMETSAT would determine the meteorological requirements of its space missions - in both geostationary and polar orbit - and eventually take control of the Meteorological Information Extraction Centre. The option of becoming a satellite operator was discussed, but was not considered at the time to be essential to fulfil EUMETSAT's mission. The Council endorsed the Long-Term Plan as a basic document of EUMETSAT at its fifth meeting on 16-17 September 1987.

For the next six years, EUMETSAT established the structures it needed to meet the aims laid out in the Long-Term Plan, and, in the course of implementing its ideas, encountered the difficulties detailed in this document that have led EUMETSAT to be what it is today. If one returns to André Lebeau's metaphor in the Introduction, that EUMETSAT's and ESA's relationship during the Organisation's early years can be characterised as a parent-child conflict, then the end of 1992 marks the time when EUMETSAT grew up.

The tensions that characterised those six years were invaluable to EUMETSAT. As this history shows, at every step of the way, EUMETSAT had to stop and examine its remit and its own

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