20030804: Meteosat Questions

>From:  "Thomas Renkevens" <address@hidden>
>Organization:  NOAA
>Keywords:  200308041956.h74JunLd002183 McIDAS METEOSAT

Hi Tom,

>Quick question concerning Meteosat data.  Recall the email traffic we
>had about a year ago... I believe the result was that you are only
>providing 6 hourly real time Meteosat data to the educational users
>through Unidata, right?

Correct.

>Reason I ask... an educational unit (Butte
>College, Oroville CA) has been using Meteosat data as viewed on the web
>site at Marshall Space Flight Center (see
>http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/ ) as have other commercial users.

OK.

>Once we found out that MSFC was putting half hourly Meteosat data on
>the web, we had to inform them of the NOAA/EUMETSAT MOU, and thus, they
>began blocking some of the data.  Of course, they have now received
>many user complaints, and the one I mention was from a University.  So
>I am trying to confirm that all you can do is the same - 6 hourly data,
>until the data are older than 3 days.

Yup, and we are not doing much of that yet.

>Of course, I don't know if Butte College is a member of Unidata or not,

They are not yet participating in Unidata.

>I just want to provide him some
>background and options, as he is about to send off an email to the
>director of Eumetsat to allow him to get the data/products for free.  I
>wish him luck.

I don't think that the person in question will have much problem
getting the images for free.  He will need to register with EUMETSAT
through their web site and then get the image data by FTP.  As far as I
could tell, EUMETSAT has not been charging for access to their imagery
-- but they reserve the right to do so at any time.  What they have been
doing is carefully tracking who is using the imagery.  One would hae to
assume that if the usage gets to be too widespread, they would try to
clamp down on access.

Cheers,

Tom

>From address@hidden Mon Aug  4 14:18:36 2003

Tom,

Thanks for the quick reply!

Tom
--
Tom Renkevens  -  Operations Manager
Satellite Services Division -  NOAA/NESDIS/OSDPD
301-763-8081 x109;   301-763-8131 fax
address@hidden     http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/