Metop-A began the official operational dissemination of near real time data from its onboard instruments in June this year. Users began using data from Metop-A instruments as early as January 2007.

The press conference is being held on the first day of the joint 2007 EUMETSAT Meteorological Satellite Conference and the 15th American Meteorological Society (AMS) Satellite Meteorology & Oceanography Conference in Amsterdam, which ends on 28 September 2007.

The press conference will be introduced and moderated by Paul Counet, EUMETSAT’s Head of Strategy and International Relations. Dr. Lars Prahm, Director-General of EUMETSAT, will then speak about Metop’s success in operation. He will underline EUMETSAT’s success as an operational agency, placing it in an excellent position to play an important role in the EU’s Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative. Support for such a role by EUMETSAT will be expressed during the press conference by Dr Volker Liebig, Director of Earth Observation Programmes at the European Space Agency (ESA), which manages the space component of GMES.

Gary Davis, Head of the Office of Systems Development at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will describe the successful early use of Metop-A data on both sides of the Atlantic. These data were already available very soon after launch - the first instruments were switched on within a week of the satellite’s launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 19 October 2006.

Users of Metop data will be represented at a senior level at the press conference. They will present various applications of Metop data. Dr. Roeland van Oss, Senior Advisor Earth Observation, Strategy & Services, at the Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut (KNMI), the Dutch weather service, will present climate and atmosphere applications and give practical examples in the Netherlands. Eric Dombrowsky, Scientific and Technical Director of Mercator Ocean, will address oceanographic applications. Dominique Marbouti, Director of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), will focus on Numerical Weather Prediction.

After their short presentations, speakers will respond to questions from journalists.

The press conference will be held at the Amsterdam RAI International Exhibition and Congress Centre, Room M of Forum Centre (entrance no. 20), Europaplein 8, beginning at 11:20 and lasting around an hour.

About EUMETSAT

The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites is an intergovernmental organisation based in Darmstadt – Germany with currently 20 European Member States (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom) and 10 Cooperating States (Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and the Czech Republic).

EUMETSAT is operating the geostationary satellites Meteosat-8 and -9 over Europe and Africa, and Meteosat-6 and -7 over the Indian Ocean.

Metop-A, the first European polar-orbiting satellite, was launched in October 2006 and is delivering operational data since 15 May 2007.

The data, products and services from EUMETSAT’s satellites make a significant contribution to weather forecasting and to the monitoring of the global climate.

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