With three more positive votes at the 110th\u202fsession of the EUMETSAT Council, including one ad referendum (pending final national confirmation), the programme now has the support of 29 of EUMETSAT\u2019s 30 Member States. Council has given authorisation to start the programme once at least 90% of its budget is committed (which will be the case when the ad referendum is lifted), which is expected to happen before the end of the year.<\/p>\n
EPS-Sterna<\/a> data are projected to provide at least \u20ac30 billion in economic value to Europe across the lifetime of the programme, with a benefit-cost ratio of up to 51:1, enabling Europe\u2019s national weather services to improve forecasts and supporting better-informed decisions that save lives, improve resilience and benefit economies.<\/p>\n The near-unanimous approval of the programme, which will be implemented as a mandatory mission within the EPS Second Generation programme, follows a comprehensive consultation process that began in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRecent years have brought record heatwaves, devastating storms, floods and wildfires across Europe,\u201d said Phil Evans, Director-General of EUMETSAT. \u201cThe backing from EUMETSAT\u2019s member states<\/a> shows the critical role EPS-Sterna will play in enabling national meteorological and hydrological services to forecast such events \u2013\u202fwhich will have tremendous benefits for the lives and livelihoods of European citizens. Getting here has taken outstanding dedication from member states and the teams involved and we now look forward to delivering this critical programme together with our partners.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The first six EPS-Sterna satellites will launch in 2029, and satellites will be replaced over the programme’s operational lifetime, which runs until 2042. The mission will provide observations globally, delivering data up to every five hours. This will improve the frequency of critical observations for predicting severe weather in sensitive areas such as Mediterranean and address critical data gaps over the Arctic \u2013 the fastest-heating region on Earth and where many weather systems affecting Europe originate or intensify.\u00a0<\/p>\n Building on proven technology<\/p>\n EPS-Sterna builds on technology\u00a0demonstrated\u00a0by the European Space Agency’s Arctic Weather Satellite (AWS), which has been successfully collecting data since August 2024. These data are already assimilated by national meteorological and hydrological services in EUMETSAT Member States and confirm the benefits which were expected. The satellites use microwave sounders that can measure atmospheric conditions even through cloud,\u00a0rain\u00a0and snow \u2013 capturing data that instruments measuring visible and infrared radiation cannot.<\/p>\n Impact studies show EPS-Sterna will reduce forecast error by up to 6% across EUMETSAT member states and as much as 9% in the Arctic region \u2013 projections now confirmed by data from AWS in orbit. These improvements will lead to better accuracy in predicting storm tracks, precipitation timing and intensity, and temperature extremes.<\/p>\n Each satellite will carry identical advanced microwave sounders but\u00a0operate\u00a0in different orbital planes, providing near-global coverage\u00a0approximately every\u00a0five hours \u2013 a substantial increase from current polar satellite systems, which typically provide coverage of the same area twice daily. In total, 20 satellites will be launched over the course of the programme to\u00a0maintain\u00a0continuous operations.<\/p>\n The satellites will be\u00a0procured\u00a0by EUMETSAT through ESA,\u00a0and\u00a0EUMETSAT will\u00a0operate\u00a0the constellation, manage the ground infrastructure, and distribute data through established platforms such as\u00a0EUMETCast<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0EUMETView<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With three more positive votes at the 110th\u202fsession of the EUMETSAT Council, including one ad referendum (pending final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-309626","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}