EUMETSAT commits to cooperative efforts to tackle global challenges

The EUMETSAT Council, meeting in Darmstadt, Germany, today, gave the go-ahead for new or renewed cooperation agreements to be signed with African, Indian and European organisations to share expertise and promote best use of meteorological satellite data.

“The benefit of these agreements will be felt by citizens of EUMETSAT’s 30 member states as well as India and Africa,” EUMETSAT Head of Strategy, Communication and International Relations Paul Counet said.

“Through these agreements, and those we have with Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, the United-States and others, we are working as part of the global community on the challenges we all face in a time of changing climate.”

EUMETSAT will renew for five years its cooperation agreement with the Agency for the Safety of Aerial Navigation in Africa and Madagascar (ASECNA), which has been in place since 1998. ASECNA is responsible for air navigation control over a large part of the continent and has a mandate for training air traffic controllers, meteorologists, technicians and emergency services at airports.

Under the agreement, EUMETSAT and ASECNA will design and run training events and EUMETSAT will deliver training to ASECNA instructors to become experts in the applications of meteorological satellite data.

EUMETSAT’s cooperation agreement with the Indian Space Research Organisation will also be renewed for five years. The agreement, which has been in place for more than 20 years, will allow EUMETSAT’s member states access to data from Indian meteorological satellite programmes and missions. ISRO will have access to all EUMETSAT data.

ISRO and EUMETSAT will collaborate more closely on the calibration and validation of data from various satellite instruments.

A collaboration agreement between EUMETSAT and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) will be renewed for five years, focusing on cooperation in activities related to climate and developing countries. Research and development actions relating to EUMETSAT’s next-generation satellite programmes also are covered by the agreement.

For EUMETSAT and its member states, a particular benefit of the agreement will be continuation of access to JRC scientific knowledge supporting EUMETSAT’s missions in the provision of satellite data for meteorology, weather and climate monitoring.

Finally, EUMETSAT and the French Space Agency (CNES) will sign a scientific cooperation agreement aimed at facilitating the uptake, verification, evolution and evaluation of data and products from EUMETSAT’s next-generation satellites.

While CNES and EUMETSAT have worked closely together for many years, mainly focusing on specific instrument-related activities, this will be the first formal agreement aimed at scientific cooperation.

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