Weather Banter - View Single Post - Meteosat

James Brown · January 24th 06, 09:24 AM posted to uk.sci.weather

In message .com,
writes
I wrote last night on this but it became submerged in a mass of other
postings, and produced not a single reaction

If we are to lose Meteosat images that will be a huge disappointment to
many.

Would it be possible for members of uk.sci.weather as a bona fide
science group to club together and get a licence for Meteosat Second
Generation images? I seem to recall that the licence fee for an
academic body is around 10,000 euros per year. Divide that by say 200
subscribers and it works out at £30 each. Some password system, or
e-mail list to subscribers, would ensure that the satellite images
would only be available to those who have paid.

This would all take a lot of sorting out, but I for one would severely
miss the satpics (from Meteosat 7) that we get at present. The
financial aspects of administering such a system would be daunting, but
not impossible.

Bernard might have some comments on this.

Jack

I think the issue Jack is the dissemination of images. Some like myself
have a free licence from the Met Office to receive the full data sets,
shortly to be joined by the METOP data. What Eumetsat will not allow
though is the re-broadcasting of those images which would then impinge
on their commercial operation.

I must admit to not being wholly sure as to what their views are with
regard to LRIT reproduction. Perhaps even the lower resolution pictures
are too good (and too many channels) now for free and immediate
availability.

I am one of those who mourns the passing of WEFAX - for the sake of
others, but I guess that's progress.

Cheers,
James
--
James Brown