Meteorology, Meteorological, History

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HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p41

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p39.

p40.

Operational Programme (MOP). Meteosat-3 was the back-up to Meteosat-4, the first of the dedicated operational Meteosat satellites.

The US request was first debated within EUMETSAT during the fourth meeting of the Policy Advisory Committee (PAC) on 9-10 March 1989. The delegates agreed that Europe should respond positively to "the US request and referred two technical proposals for the project, one from ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) and one from France, to the Scientific and Technical Group (STG) for evaluation prior to the next Council meeting.

Delegates at the tenth Council meeting in June 1989 discussed the two proposals for what was called at that time the GOES back-up. In the ESOC proposal, satellite control, data pre-processing and dissemination of high resolution images to the USA and European users would take place from Darmstadt. The estimated cost was a total of 16.2 Million Accounting Units (MAU) at 1989 prices for the three years of the proposed GOES back-up mission. The proposal envisaged data being prepared to the same level of performance as for the MOP. The STG favoured the ESOC proposal.

France proposed a less expensive approach (9.1 MAU at 1989 prices). Under this option, ESOC would control the satellite, but France would undertake pre-processing and image dissemination from its own facilities for a cost of 0.9 MAU over three years. Further, France suggested that images could be produced hourly instead of half-hourly. This reduction in performance might make image interpretation less reliable, but it would cut costs and Meteosat-3 could still do what the USA wanted, namely act as a look-out for severe tropical storms. During the debate, France reminded delegates that the GOES back-up was a new programme and not subject to the same scale of contribution as the MOP.

The discussion about how to implement the GOES back-up mission therefore presaged two other issues that would become critically important for EUMETSAT. These both came to a head when delegates were establishing the Meteosat Transition Programme (MTP). One debate was about ground segment architecture and how much processing should be undertaken centrally versus what should be done within national centres (see chapter 5). The second debate was about how to determine scales of contribution to new programmes. Some favoured a scale of contribution related to Gross National Product (GNP) (see chapter 4). Others preferred to adopt the same scale of contribution that applied to the MOP.

The Italian delegate agreed that France was correct to encourage the use of national facilities wherever possible, but doubted the French could be ready on time to implement the GOES back-up. He argued that the GOES back-up mission was too large to be undertaken by one country. Further, argued Italy, the GOES back-up was a misnomer, because the satellite would be positioned over the Atlantic and would provide important meteorological data for Europe. In fact, moving Meteosat-3 to 50° West meant that Europe was helping itself as much as it was helping the USA. The Secretariat then advised the meeting that EUMETSAT could pay its share of the mission from savings in the MOP.

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.

eChapter TOP

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

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