Providing Continuity into the Future: EUMETSAT Next Generation Meteorological Satellites

This presentation introduces the next generation EUMETSAT Satellite 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. The Meteosat Third Generation Satellite Programme is a six spacecraft Programme consisting of four imaging and two sounding three-axis stabilized platforms. The imaging platforms carry two dedicated science missions; The Flexible Combined Imager, continues the heritage of MSG SEVIRI with increased resolution, more spectral bands and increased temporal sampling, whereas the Lightning Imager is a first European lightning mission that provides full disk detection capabilities. The sounding platforms include an interferometer, the Infra-red Sounder (IRS), with hyper-spectral resolution in the thermal spectral domain, and the Copernicus Sentinel-4 instrument, the high resolution Ultraviolet Visible Near-infrared (UVN) spectrometer. The planned launch dates of the first imaging and sounding platforms are mid-2019 and mid-2021 respectively. The EUMETSAT Polar System - Second Generation is also based on a dual platform configuration – three so-called A-satellites carry the optical imaging, infrared and microwave sounding; aerosol imaging, and radio occultation missions and also hosts the Copernicus Sentinel-5 mission. The B-satellites are dedicated to microwave and sub-millimetre-wave imaging, scatterometry and radio occultation. In addition to providing continuity to the instruments on- board the current Metop-satellites, albeit with improved capabilities, the EPS-SG satellites will also carry new instruments namely the Microwave Imager, the Ice Cloud Imager and the multi-viewing, multi-channel and multi-polarisation imager. Therefore the EPS-SG Programme is expected to be one of the most important sources of satellite observations for all forecasts based on NWP in the 2020–2040 timeframe. It is expected to increase direct socio-economic benefits to the EUMETSAT Member States and leverage additional benefits through its integration into the Joint Polar System shared with NOAA and cooperation in the context of CGMS and WMO.