EUMETSAT Perspective on Climate Monitoring Architecture

1. EUMETSAT Perspective on Climate Monitoring Architecture Dr Lars Prahm, Director-General

2. Contents • The Challenge • Rationale for a Climate Monitoring Architecture • Modalities of the Writing Group • Implementation Considerations • EUMETSAT Contributions

3. The Challenge • Requirements basis • Relatively clear and stable statement of requirements for climate monitoring (From GCOS) • Implementation of these requirements is a challenge • Contributing systems owned by a wide variety of agencies (both operational and R & D) with different interpretations • No clear framework for systematically measuring the implementation status with respect to the requirements • Difficult to coordinate a global response to a global problem

4. Rationale for a Climate Monitoring Architecture • A number of entities (e.g. WMO SP and CEOS WG on Climate) have independently concluded that a climate monitoring architecture would be an appropriate tool to help: • Systematically establish how close we are to meeting the requirements • Derive an action plan to fill any identified gaps • Establish the links between observations, climate data records, applications and decision-making. This last issue is obviously wider than climate monitoring, but is relevant if the link is to be made between observational funding decisions and the impact on decision-making (including policy-making)

5. Rationale for a Climate Monitoring Architecture - Ctd Applications Climate Record Creation Decision- Making Sensing Earth Environment Decisions Observations Records Reports

6. Modalities of the Writing Group • Following the establishment of a "badgeless" climate Architecture Writing Group in January of this year, very good progress has been made • EUMETSAT expects the Group to deliver a very meaningful contribution to the development of a climate monitoring architecture by August/Sept of this year • Due to common membership, the output is also expected to be well-coordinated with the parallel initiative in the CEOS WG on Climate • So far, a feature of this Writing Group has been its constructive and pragmatic attitude, which we feel is partially due to its "badgeless" nature

7. Modalities of the Writing Group - Ctd • From a EUMETSAT perspective, it is essential to maintain, and build upon, this "badgeless" approach so that the resultant architecture can be more readily endorsed internationally (WMO, CEOS, GEO, GCOS, CGMS, ......) EUM/SIR/VWG/11/012 WP 2000: Climate SBA 9 October 2011

8. Implementing a Climate Monitoring Architecture • Once implementation aspects are addressed we feel it is important to stress that: • The implementation should be organised by existing entities (the landscape is already rich in organisational entities and no benefit would be gained by further complicating it with new entities/mechanisms) • In order to be successful the implementation will need to rely heavily on long-term commitments from space agencies, together with cooperation/coordination at an international level. Hence operational agencies should be prepared to play a key role in the implementation of the architecture EUM/SIR/VWG/11/012 WP 2000: Climate SBA 9 October 2011

9. EUMETSAT Contributions • The EUMETSAT Intergovernmental convention states the objective of EUMETSAT to contribute to the operational monitoring of climate thus: • EUMETSAT attaches a very high importance to both the development of an architecture and its subsequent implementation • For the development of the architecture, EUMETSAT is mainly contributing via: • The Writing Group (2 members: 1 EUMETSAT, 1 CGMS) • The CEOS WG Climate (2 members)

10. EUMETSAT Contributions • For the development of the implementation plan of the architecture, EUMETSAT is ready to make a similar contribution. • EUMETSAT will provide a key contribution to the archictecture through its programmes. • EUMETSAT is looking forward to cooperate with partners on the Climate Monitoring Architecture.

11. Slide 11 Thank you for your attention!