ISRO, EUMETSAT Deepen Ties in Earth Observation and Weather Monitoring
Joint meet reviews payloads, data sharing and roadmap for weather services
Nellore: The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) have reaffirmed their strong partnership in advancing space-based Earth observation and weather monitoring.
A special focus would be on improving scientific research and operational applications.
Over the years, the collaboration has expanded across several sectors like satellite payload development, data sharing, algorithm refinement, calibration and validation (CAL/VAL) and application development.
A milestone of this partnership has been the global use of high-quality ocean surface wind vector data generated from scatterometer payloads onboard Isro’s Oceansat-2, SCATSAT-1, and Oceansat-3 satellites. These datasets have been extensively used by the international scientific community and operational weather agencies.
In recent years, cooperation between the two organisations has also extended to extreme weather nowcasting using data from EUMETSAT’s Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellites operating over the Indian Ocean region.
To further strengthen the partnership, a joint meeting between Isro and an EUMETSAT delegation was held at the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad from Feb 10 to 12. The delegations included 10 scientists and engineers and seven joining online. Around 150 scientists and engineers from various Isro centres participated in the discussions.
The three-day meeting reviewed the current status of scientific cooperation and explored future collaborative pathways in areas such as payload realisation, satellite data processing, retrieval algorithms, CAL/VAL activities and application development.
The deliberations featured a plenary session, five parallel thematic sessions and a dedicated breakout session.
Both organisations agreed on a tiered roadmap with short, medium and long-term goals aimed at strengthening algorithm development, enhancing calibration and validation efforts, harmonising satellite data and expanding the use of space-based observations for operational and research applications.
The meeting underscored the strategic importance of the Isro–EUMETSAT partnership in advancing Earth observation science and delivering improved weather, ocean and climate services for the benefit of society.