Status of EUMETSAT Satellite Programs: Towards the Next Generation Meteorological Satellites (Invited Presentation)

This presentation introduces the status of the current satellite programmes operated by EUMETSAT, providing the state of the art observations as a gateway towards the improved capabilities of the next generation meteorological satellites. Today, the backbone of the EUMETSAT satellite systems are the geostationary Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) and EUMETSAT Polar System (EPS) programmes. In addition EUMETSAT provides data from the Jason satellites and at time of writing this Abstract anticipates starting operation of the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission on behalf of the European Commission towards the end of 2015. In addition to the status of these satellite programmes, recent improvements to the data and products that are generated in a distributed application ground segment, including the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facilities, are presented. The presentation will further introduce the next generation programmes, namely the Meteosat Third and EPS Second Generation and their instruments and capabilities. These Programmes have been approved by the EUMETSAT Member States with secured funding, ensuring continuation of observations from the geostationary and polar orbits until 2040 timeframe. Specific focus will be on the improved capabilities of the new instruments over the previous generation, highlighting some new innovative applications.