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The Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS)

 

The CGMS coordinates operational and research and development (R&D) space agency activities in support of weather and climate monitoring.

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The CGMS was formalised on 19 September 1972 by Japan, the USA, Europe and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), in order to seek common ground on geostationary meteorological satellite programmes.

Last Updated

10 June 2022

Published on

06 April 2020

Since then, the CGMS has come a long way, now covering operational and R&D satellite programmes in low-Earth orbit, which, in future, might be complemented by highly elliptical orbit satellites. This ensures that users can easily receive, retrieve and use the data and products for improved forecasting and other applications.

Objective

It's goal is to globally coordinate operational and R&D satellite systems for meteorology, oceanography, climate and space weather. 

This includes protection of in-orbit assets, contingency planning, improvement of quality of data, support to users, and facilitation of shared data access and development of the use of satellite products in key application areas.

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Main activities

The CGMS coordinates from an end-to-end perspective, through development of multilateral cooperation across all weather satellite operators and with the user community, in particular the WMO and IOC-UNESCO, together with other entities.

Additionally, the CGMS has endorsed the space-based observing system component of the Vision for WIGOS (WMO Integrated Global Observing System) in 2040.

In 2010, CGMS and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellite (CEOS), together with the WMO, developed the Joint GSICS), the Sustained, Coordinated Processing of Environmental Satellite Data for Climate Monitoring (SCOPE-CM), and the Virtual Laboratory (VLab) related to training on the use of satellite data. 

Our role

EUMETSAT joined the CGMS in 1987 and has since been its permanent Secretariat. The CGMS Secretariat represents CGMS members in international bodies such as the WMO Congress and Executive Council, the Group on Earth Observation (GEO), and the Space Frequency Coordination Group (SFCG).

For more information, please visit the CGMS website.