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page 11
The information from Europe's satellites (current and future systems) is added
to that from satellites and ground-based observing stations worldwide. After
much complex coordinateted scientific and technological effort, these global
observations become forecasts that have a direct impact on the lives and
livelihoods of everyone on Earth.
Even though we have all waited for the television weather bulletin at the end of
the news, it is hard to remember - when sitting in a living room - just how
important it is to know what the weather will do. Occasionally, an early riser
might catch the shipping forecast from one of the National Meteorological
Services, and then the power and untameable relentlessness of weather briefly
and frighteningly enters a bedroom or living room - and is forgotten. The
international news shows people clinging to treetops in Africa, and waiting with
their hope ebbing for rescue. This saddens briefly, and is forgotten. Perhaps a
river burst its banks in northern England, and the news shows people wearily
shifting sodden belongings they may have spent a lifetime working for. Never
mind, they are alive, we say, and forget. But that is not always the case. In a
southern French village cameras catch the grief-stricken faces of friends and
family shocked by the death of those close to them. People in a Spanish fishing
village wait fearfully for news of a missing vessel.
There is a story for every nation, and still we forget. The weather forecast is
often a subject for light-hearted conversation in the comer shop. The same
conversation might turn to the price of the shop's goods. Yet these prices often
depend on the quality of weather forecasts that govern the decisions made by
road hauliers and farmers. When you scratch the surface there are many aspects
of daily life where weather and our ability to predict it influences our
activities.
"...the safety of populations and the efficient execution of numerous human
activities are conditioned by meteorological data..."
And that, of course, is the justification for EUMETSAT's existence.
Now the Organisation is moving into a new phase of its development. During the
first decade of the century EUMETSAT will, for the first time, have a full suite
of meteorological satellites aloft. They will send a rich stream of data to
meteorologists working to unravel the cryptic messages of Earth observations at
specialist centres throughout Europe and at EUMETSAT's headquarters in
Darmstadt, Germany. The seeds for what the Organisation is about to do have
their genesis in the pre-EUMETSAT days and in its first six years or so of
existence.
This is the story of those first critical years of EUMETSAT and of its emergence
as a mature intergovernmental Organisation. Even though the science and
technology of meteorological satellites are challenging and fascinating subjects
in their own right, this short history looks at the evolution of EUMETSAT as the
Organisation that enables the science and technology to be implemented in the
complicated European political world. In particular, the account explores
EUMETSAT's central and crucial relationship with the European Space Agency (ESA)
and the interactions between EUMETSAT's own Member States. In the first few
years these were the relationships that |