European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites

Group on Earth Observations – GEO Week 2022 Statement of EUMETSAT

EUMETSAT is pleased to participate in person to this GEO Week 2022, after two years of on- line meetings, and is committed to continue supporting the implementation of the GEO Strategic Plan 2016-2025. More specifically, EUMETSAT ensures continuous operation of the GEONETCast system over Europe and Africa – EUMETCast – allowing many users to access Earth observation, shortly after sensing, and in area with insufficient internet capacity.

Beyond the operation of the system, EUMETSAT also supports GEONETCast users in setting-up and maintaining their stations; and we regularly update the GEONETcast data flow with new products to support the needs of the various user communities.

Looking to the near future, I am pleased to inform GEO community that the first satellite of the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) will be launched into space in mid-December. The Meteosat Third Generation satellite system is set to revolutionise weather forecasting and enable more precise monitoring of our changing atmosphere, land and oceans. The first satellite will be positioned over Africa, and will provide unprecedented sets of observation of weather and climate with increase accuracy and frequency.

As this GEO Plenary is taking place on the African continent, I would like to highlight a few aspects of our close cooperation with Africa. The 15^th EUMETSAT User Forum in Africa took place on 12-16 September 2022 in Dar es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania, with 150 participants from 50 African countries attending. We focused on the necessary strengthening of capacity for African users to access and process satellite data from MTG, which will support Early Warning and many applications in the continent. MTG will allow not only to continue delivery of operational EO-based services in all Africa, that started more than 20 years ago, but also to enable new innovative services, in combination with Copernicus data.

During the Forum, users also exchanged on how to deliver EO-based services in key sectors such as Blue Economy, Disaster Risk Reduction and climate monitoring, and the contribution hereto of EU-funded project such as ClimSA and GMES&Africa, that are implemented by the African Union Commission and Africa regional centers.

Today about 400 GEONETCast reception stations are installed across Africa, and together with the African Union Commission, we have informed our users about plan for updating some of these stations to be ready for the MTG.

As you can see, EUMETSAT is committed to provide impactful observations from space to the user community worldwide, with a long term perspective. We are also keen to ensure that African users can fully benefits from the data from the satellite we operates.

Coming back to GEO, EUMETSAT will contribute to the new Work Programme 2023-2025, and will follow carefully the discussion on the GEO System of Systems, as well as on the GEO post- 2025.