Each SAF is led by the National Meteorological Service (NMS) of a EUMETSAT Member State in association with a consortium of EUMETSAT Member States and Cooperating States, government bodies and research institutes. The lead NMS is responsible for the management of each complete SAF project. The research, data and services provided by the SAFs complement the standard meteorological products delivered by EUMETSAT’s central facilities in Darmstadt, Germany.

EUMETSAT supervises and coordinates the overall activities of the SAF network and the integration of the SAFs into the various operations within the EUMETSAT Application Ground Segment. It manages and coordinates interfaces - between the SAFs themselves and between SAFs and other EUMETSAT systems - overseeing the integration of SAFs into the overall ground segment infrastructure. By overseeing the entire network of SAFs, EUMETSAT ensures that services are delivered in the most reliable and cost-effective way.

SAFs currently use data from meteorological satellites both in geostationary and polar orbit.

There are currently seven SAFs providing products and services on an operational basis:

• SAF on Support to Nowcasting and Very Short Range Forecasting
• Ocean and Sea Ice SAF
• Climate Monitoring SAF
• Numerical Weather Prediction SAF
• Land Surface Analysis SAF
• Ozone and Atmospheric Chemistry Monitoring SAF
• GRAS Meteorology SAF

One SAF is under development:

• Support to Operational Hydrology and Water Management

The SAFs help deliver a variety of benefits including:

• Improvements to short-range forecasting of severe weather hazards
• Support to the aviation, agriculture, construction, gas, water and electricity industries
• Better understanding of the causes and effects of pollution of the upper atmosphere and the depletion of ozone
• Early warning of hazards
• Better data for climate monitoring
• Improved information for land use, ecology, disaster monitoring and agricultural forecasting
• Benefits for sea transport, fishing and offshore industries
• Improved data for input to Numerical Weather Prediction and the availability of user software packages for operational applications
• Improved software packages and near-real time and offline products