Cooperation Between NOAA’s and Europe’s Geostationary Meteorological Satellite Programs (Invited Presentation)

The presentation reports on the cooperation between European geostationary satellite programs, the Meteosat programs, and NOAA’s geostationary satellite programs. The beginning of the cooperation was between NOAA and the European Space Agency (ESA) and evolved into an enhanced cooperation between NOAA and EUMETSAT, the operational European satellite agency. The excellent cooperation between NOAA and EUMETSAT and the leading role of both agencies within CGMS (Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites) also served as fertile ground for wider international cooperation with other operational satellite agencies. Today world-wide user communities benefit from a sustained ring of operational geostationary satellites operated by different agencies in a complementary manner. The talk recalls the successful concept of ‘realization of advanced applications based the same science’ which is widely followed by operational satellite agencies. The talk emphasizes the leading role of Greg Mandt and the GOES-R program which provide a new reference imaging instrument (Advanced Baseline Imager/ABI) and the first operational Lightning Imager (LI) in geostationary orbit.