Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
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weather and
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HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p39.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p37.

p38.

the two organisations together, because research and development of new missions is still needed by meteorology. After a lengthy discussion about this most significant of EUMETSAT's relationships, the PAC's conclusion was that EUMETSAT should be involved at an early stage in the preparatory work of any meteorological satellite programme. "In the ideal case," they said, "EUMETSAT should decide on the necessary specifications, e.g. for new instruments and ground data handling".

The Committee also considered the implications of EUMETSAT taking over the MIEC and thus adopting a more operational role. They concluded there was no objection in principle to EUMETSAT adopting operational activities, but cautioned that all such moves would have to be carefully costed.

On the subject of future satellite programmes,the PAC said that it was of "paramount importance" that EUMETSAT take an early decision "in principle" regarding its participation with ESA in the MSG programme. The Director, they said, should write to all Council members telling them that this decision needed to be taken before the next ministerial meeting of ESA. The PAC was less enthusiastic about the Agency's plans for polar orbit, suggesting that EUMETSAT monitor the programme and define its own requirements.

At the end of its meeting, the PAC concluded that, "by and large, it [the plan] very well represented the aspirations of the Member States." In September 1987, the full Council gave the Committee's view an official seal of approval, endorsing the plan as a basic reference document for EUMETSAT.

During preparation of and discussion about the Long-Term Plan, the founding Convention served EUMETSAT well. It expressed EUMETSAT's objectives so broadly that the Council had enough interpretative leeway within which to set the Organisation's strategic course. Only when the Council came to discuss specific projects were the Convention's weaknesses highlighted. The most glaring of these was the lack of prescription for establishing new programmes. It is arguable that had the Convention been more prescriptive from the beginning it would have curtailed EUMETSAT's freedom to establish a strategy as ambitious as the one it adopted.

EUMETSAT's first steps from strategy to specific programmes were taken with a Resolution assigning the utmost priority to the MSG programme at the fifth Council meeting and in a Resolution on "The Preparation of Future Satellite Programmes", taken at the eighth Council meeting in June 1988. With hindsight it can be seen that EUMETSAT was already pushing at the boundaries of its founding Convention. But it was not until EUMETSAT was discussing the legal basis for providing back-up to the USA in geostationary orbit that the need to update the Convention truly crystallised.

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