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The IGO monitors
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page 75
meteorological package to Europe. EUMETSAT is providing microwave humidity
sounders to the USA. One Metop satellite will occupy the morning orbit, one NOAA
satellite will occupy the afternoon orbit (see table 6, page 78). Together they
will provide four global data sets daily to forecasters for both computerised
predictions and short-term forecasting, in addition to other applications such
as climate monitoring.
How it all began As in the story of the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) ,
events prior to the existence of EUMETSAT are significant.
Polar orbiting meteorological satellites were, of course, first discussed in
Europe in the late 1960s. But once ESA took over the French Meteosat project
making it a European mission, the idea of a polar orbiter was put on the back
burner - and the heat turned off. At that time, there was little need for Europe
to develop a polar orbiting system because the USA made the data from its two
civilian weather satellites freely available.
Then in 1982 the US government said that it would not supply two polar orbiting
satellites indefinitely. By then it was clear that forecasts were more accurate
when two satellites rather than one, with equator crossing times separated by
several hours, provided data.
Considerable debate followed about what international effort could be made to
provide or contribute to a second satellite to maintain the quality of satellite
observations from polar orbit. The debate continued in desultory fashion until
it was given political focus on 6 March 1984 in Washington DC. At that time a
panel of experts on remote sensing from space met under the auspices of the
Economic Summit of leading industrialised nations (then the G7) and recommended
formation of the International Polar Orbiting Meteorological Satellite Group
(lPOMS) to formulate a strategy for global meteorological observation from polar
orbit. The G7 heads endorsed the proposal at a meeting in London that year.
During the rest of the 1980s, IPOMS meetings provided a framework within which
meteorologists internationally reached a general consensus about the type of
observations and instruments needed for weather satellites in polar orbit. Many
of the participants in IPOMS were later also delegates to EUMETSAT or were on
the staff of NOAA, ESA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA).
IPOMS met first at the end of November 1984 in Washington DC. The initial
participants included Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Norway, the UK,
the USA, the European Economic Community and ESA. EUMETSAT was not represented,
because, although open by then for signature, its Convention had not yet been
fully ratified.
One option open to IPOMS was to take advantage of the polar platforms which NASA
had proposed should be an integral element of the International Space Station.
The idea was that meteorological instruments could fly on these platforms. The
polar platforms were to prove to be a thorn in the side of meteorologists on
both sides of the Atlantic, most especially in Europe. Though they were to delay
the development of European meteorological observation from polar orbit, the
idea at the time |