[SatNews] EUMETSAT has increased the bandwidth of the communications link between Svalbard, Norway, and its headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany. This will speed up the transfer of global data from its Metop and the U.S. NOAA-19 polar-orbiting satellites acquired at its Svalbard station and further improve timeliness of delivery to forecast centers.

Observations from polar orbiting satellites need to be delivered as quickly as possible after sensing because the value of observations for forecasting diminishes with increasing latency.

In 2011, EUMETSAT had already reduced the latency of global data from its Metop satellite by a factor of 2, to 65 minutes, on average, by downlinking twice per orbit instead of once, to the U.S. McMurdo station in Antarctica as well as in Svalbard. This was made possible under the Antarctic Data Acquisition (ADA) project run in cooperation with NOAA, with support from NASA and the US National Science Foundation.

The latest improvements in the communications link between Svalbard and Darmstadt, implemented in June, have further reduced the average data latency for the EUMETSAT Metop-B satellite from 65 to 47 minutes on average and from 50 to 25 minutes in the most favourable case. This has also significantly improved timeliness for global data from the EUMETSAT secondary satellite, Metop-A, and those from the NOAA-18 and -19 satellites also acquired at Svalbard, under the Initial Joint Polar System cooperation with NOAA.

At regional level, the EUMETSAT Advanced Retransmission Service (EARS) delivers Metop observations of Europe and adjacent seas within 15 to 30 minutes, based on retransmission of satellite data acquired and processed by a network of stations distributed across EUMETSAT Member States. In the context of the IJPS cooperation with NOAA, this regional service has recently been extended to data from the US NPP Suomi satellite.

Additionally, over the last 20 years, EUMETSAT has developed its cooperation with Africa on access and applications of its satellite data, in particular in major capacity building projects funded by the EDF, like PUMA (Preparation for the use of MSG in Africa) and AMESD (African Monitoring of the Environment for Sustainable Development). EUMETSAT has deployed about 400 low cost data receiving stations over the entire African continent, through which African users can access in real time the full EUMETSAT data stream and environmental information and forecasts from other partners.

A new Memorandum of Understanding on Earth Observation (EO) establishes a political mechanism for ensuring that future cooperation will continue to benefit all African Union member states. A first concrete realization is the EUMETSAT contribution to the MESA capacity building project established between the African Union and the European Union and funded by the European Development Fund, as a follow-up to the PUMA and AMESD projects. Capitalizing on previous investments, the project’s focus is to strengthen the capacity to use Earth observation data in Africa, with emphasis on climate and environment applications.”