EUMETSAT and the dust cover of the first history eChapter selector GavaghanCommunications

Meteorology, Meteorological, History

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HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p29.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p25.


p28 (from page 25)

meteorological services needed to convince of the validity of meteorological satellites.

During the years that the process of winning funding for operational meteorological satellites moved slowly forward, the space research and meteorological communities debated the optimum organisational structure for managing operational satellite meteorology. This discussion was opened by the Meteosat Programme Board. France pointed out that the issue was political, and that the long-term aim was for the users to acquire the ability to design and manage future systems without recourse to technological research funds. Given this aim, France argued that the National Meteorological Services should create a new international organisation with its own legal identity, budget and staff.

The Secretariat of ESRO pointed out the very real diplomatic, political and legal difficulties of establishing such a body. In the short term, the Secretariat suggested a protocol enabling the Organisation to operate Meteosat via a Programme Board, and the ESRO Council agreed to this suggestion in March 1975, on the grounds that it would be unrealistic to expect the meteorological services to have established an operating body by 1977. Given ESRO's ongoing transmutation into ESA and the associated long ratification process, both the Organisation's Secretariat and Council would have been well versed in this topic. The terms of the new protocol gave ESA responsibility for operating the Meteosat-F1 for no more than three years, which in practice extended its control of the satellite until 23 November 1980.

During the debate about this protocol, the Programme Board stressed the importance of the meteorological services establishing a structure to take over operational responsibility for the satellite after the end of 1980. ESA's Council asked Sir John Mason, Director-General of the UK Meteorological Office8: to chair a Space Meteorology working Group to advise on associated matters. His group asked the Agency's Executive to urge the Meteosat Programme Board to buy a launch for the second Meteosat and to prepare the engineering model as a third satellite which could fill any gap that might open between the second Meteosat and the operational series.

National delegates to the Meteosat Programme Board agreed in March 1977 to buy a launch for Meteosat-F2, if that could be covered by the Meteosat contingency fund. The Board, which was responsible for the expenditure of funds from research ministries, again stressed the need to find an organisational structure and budget for operational satellite meteorology.

Mason's group was working on just that issue. In September 1977 they said that a light and inexpensive organisational structure enabling the meteorological services to enter legal agreements should be in place by the end of 1980 and that the organisation should be open to ESA non-Member States. They concluded that a new legal entity would be the most flexible and efficient solution, but would be too expensive


8 . Now known as the "Met Office".

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

The History of EUMETSAT is available in English and French from EUMETSAT©.
First printed 2001. ISBN 92-9110-040-4

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

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