| Popis: |
Timeliness is defined as the temporal span between making an observation on-board the satellite and availability of the relevant mission products at the end-user interface. Reducing timeliness is of key importance for meteorological applications. Following consultation with users and application experts, the future EUMETSAT Polar System is currently being defined for replacing the existing EPS system in the 2021 timeframe. The new system targets significant reductions in end-to-end timeliness with respect to those obtained today (from about the 65 minutes achieved currently for Level 1B on a global scale down to 20-30 minutes for data observed over Europe / North Atlantic region). At the early stages of system definition, however, the trade space available is large, involving aspects that range from orbit and constellation to ground station network, possible use of GEO data relay satellites, selection of space-to-ground links, data repatriation concepts (to central site, with or without compression), processing schemes (central versus distributed) and processing constraints (instruments inter-dependencies, auxiliary data), as well as different dissemination channels to users. The approach adopted by EUMETSAT for in-house end-toend timeliness modeling in the frame of EPS-SG system feasibility studies is briefly presented. This modeling is then used to present a discussion on the relevant data acquisition concepts being analyzed for the future EPS-SG system. |
