INITIATIVES – CGMS – Website

VLab

CGMSadmin — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 13:53:53 +0000

WMO-CGMS Virtual Laboratory for Training and Education in Satellite Meteorology (VLab)

Established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS), the WMO-CGMS Virtual Laboratory (VLab) is a global network dedicated to strengthening the use of satellite data and products in weather, climate, and environmental services throughout WMO member countries. VLab connects Centres of Excellence (CoEs) and satellite operators around the world to deliver training, share expertise, and build capacity. Through online resources, workshops, and collaborative initiatives, it empowers meteorological professionals worldwide to make better use of satellite observations for forecasting and analysis.

To learn more about this initiative, please click here.

Private sector engagement

BitAdmin — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 10:55:30 +0000

CGMS Members are leveraging the opportunities of the rapidly growing private space sector while maintaining data standards (in particular quality, timeliness and continuity) suitable for operational applications and open data sharing. Moving forward, CGMS seeks to increase engagement with the private sector through multi-sector engagements to help foster innovation and to address our common challenges. CGMS will endeavour to strengthen the scientific and technological dialogue with the private sector, e.g. through the different CGMS International Science Working Groups.

A key objective is to comply with the new WMO Resolution 1, i.e. to continue to promote global and free exchange of data, and to strengthen the dialogue on data policy with the private sector.

CGMS-52 approved best practices for commercial data purchases, part of the CGMS Futures 2022+ Project. These best practices were later shared at the WMO Open Consultative Platform and the American Meteorological Society annual meeting. The CGMS best practices on relationship with the private sector on commercial data purchases, endorsed by CGMS-52 plenary, are available here.

CGMS will work together with The World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Open Consultative Platform (OCP) in the coming years to deepen the engagement with the private sector. Information about the OCP is available here. CGMS will also coordinate its activities on Private Sector Engagement with the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS).

References:

Hybrid space infrastructure

BitAdmin — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 10:54:05 +0000

Coming soon…

Socioeconomic benefits

BitAdmin — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 10:48:09 +0000

Socio-economic benefit (SEB) studies play an important role in supporting national and intergovernmental approval processes for satellite programmes by demonstrating the significant scientific and economic value of observations generated by satellites monitoring the Earth system.

The main purpose of SEB studies is generally to provide stakeholders, policymakers and decision-makers with the justification needed to understand and support new satellite programmes. SEB inputs are often crucial for securing approval of national budgets for satellite systems and for maintaining political support for the global observing system effort.

SEB studies also play a broader role in engaging a wider range of stakeholders and demonstrating the value of satellite systems to national and international organisations, user communities and the general public. This is generally reflected in the provision of improved downstream services, which ultimately depend on the availability of state-of-the-art satellite observations.

Recognising that it is neither possible nor practical to adopt a single best-practice methodology for SEB studies that would be suitable for all CGMS agencies, CGMS focuses on sharing individual agency experiences, practices and outputs from SEB studies. CGMS is developing a repository of Case Studies, which may be useful for sharing information and demonstrating the benefits of bilateral efforts between CGMS members.

CGMS will maintain close coordination with the World Meteorological Organization’s efforts to document the overall socio-economic value of global Earth system monitoring efforts, in particular WIGOS.

Studies

Agency	Study
NOAA	Estimating the benefits of ocean data in mitigating HAB events (2024)
CMA	Preliminary assessment of socio-economic benefits from CMA meteorological satellite programmes (Apr 2023)
EUMETSAT	The social and economic benefits of EPS-Aeolus and EPS-Sterna (Nov 2023)
NOAA	NOAA’s GeoXO Benefit Analysis, and Economic Benefit Analysis of NOAA’s Space Weather Products and Services to the Electric Power Industry (Apr 2023)

CGMS Socio-economic Benefits Tiger Team (SETT)

The CGMS established the Socioeconomic Benefits Tiger Team (SETT) at the 41st plenary session of CGMS in order to develop credible methodology and common terminology for articulating the socio-economic benefit of satellite observing systems, and explore the most effective ways to communicate this information to desired stakeholders (SETT Terms of Reference).

The SETT produced a Guidance Document to aid CGMS Members considering conducting a socioeconomic benefit study, available here.

For additional information on the SETT, please read the Summary of the third CGMS SETT Workshop (7 October 2015) held at the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) in Paris, France.

In addition you can access the Summary of the second CGMS SETT Workshop (January 2015), and the SETT Progress Report (July 2014). SETT-related studies and presentations are available here for review.

The SETT provided:

a presentation on “Understanding and Assessing the Value of Improved Satellite Data for the Users of Operational Sea Ice Products and Information” at the 2016 GEOValue Data to Decisions Workshop on 10-11 March 2016, at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, France; and on “Measuring the Value of Environmental Satellites: An International Effort” on 14 January 2016 during the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

The SETT activities have in the meantime been concluded.

Space weather

BitAdmin — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 20:35:46 +0000

In 2018 CGMS expanded the scope of its activities to include Space Weather. The coordination of Space Waether activities is pursued from an end-to-end perspective, between operators of space weather sensors on satellites, through space weather service providers and onto end-user communities, including the satellite operations community.

CGMS works in the following areas:

The coordination of existing and planned sensing of solar and near-Earth environment necessary for operational space weather services, such that gaps in global space-borne instrument capability may be identified and mitigated within the international space-faring community;
The quality and reliability of the end-to-end space weather data provision and whether it is really fulfilling the needs and expectations of the user community;
Collection of spacecraft operator anomaly reports, potentially related to the space environment, to contribute to a database of space weather effects for usage by satellite designers, operators and service providers in increasing the robustness of satellites and their missions against space environmental effects, and mitigating risks of routine spacecraft operation.
Identifying opportunities for inter-calibration of space weather sensors between operators to improve consistency of global data sets
The compilation of user needs and existing / planned assets in the WMO (World Meteorological Organisation) OSCAR Database.

CGMS Socio-economic Benefits Tiger Team (SETT)

BitAdmin — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 23:00:00 +0000

CGMS Socio-economic Benefits Tiger Team (SETT)

The SETT produced a Guidance Document to aid CGMS Members considering conducting a socioeconomic benefit study, available here.

For additional information on the SETT’s activities and plans, please read the Summary of the third CGMS SETT Workshop (7 October 2015) held at the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) in Paris, France.

In addition you can access the Summary of the second CGMS SETT Workshop (January 2015), and the SETT Progress Report (July 2014). SETT-related studies and past presentations are available here for review.

If you or your agency is interested in participating in SETT activities or would like additional information, please contact the SETT Chair Charles.Wooldridge@noaa.gov (tel +1-301-713-0813).

Recent presentations:

Charles Wooldridge gave a presentation on “Understanding and Assessing the Value of Improved Satellite Data for the Users of Operational Sea Ice Products and Information” at the 2016 GEOValue Data to Decisions Workshop on 10-11 March 2016, at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, France.

Charles Wooldridge gave an invited presentation on “Measuring the Value of Environmental Satellites: An International Effort” on 14 January 2016 during the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

CEOS-CGMS Joint WG on Climate

BitAdmin — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

CEOS-CGMS Joint Working Group on Climate (JWGClimate)

The first meeting of the joint Working Group on Climate (JWGClimate) of the Committee for Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and the Coordination Group for meteorological Satellites (CGMS) took place on 5-7 March 2014 at EUMETSAT HQ, Darmstadt, Germany. The main topics included the next steps to be taken in implementing the Climate Strategy, the gap analysis that can be initiated from the Essential Climate Variables (ECV) Inventory and the impact of the strategy report issued by the Carbon Task force.

The goals of this working group are to establish an inventory of existing records of ECV derived from observations from space, to plan the production of more Climate Data Records and to optimise planning of future satellites to expand records and avoid data gaps.

The meeting was followed by a workshop of the SCOPE-CM (Sustained, Co-Ordinated Processing of Environmental Satellite Data for Climate Monitoring) international initiative supported by the World Meteorological Organization and a network of operators of environmental satellite systems, where work plans for cooperative Climate Data Record generation projects were established.

The GHG Roadmap

JWGClimate has developed a roadmap to implement a constellation of satellites dedicated to observing and monitoring atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHG), namely carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄), from space.

The GHG Roadmap aims to coordinate efforts across CEOS and CGMS agencies to ensure the quality, transparency, and continuity of space-based GHG products for both scientific research and policy-making. Its ultimate goal is to establish operational systems that combine satellite-based GHG measurements with ground-based, airborne and shipborne observations of CO₂ and CH₄, addressing the needs of a wide range of stakeholders.

Within this roadmap, the GHG Task Team collaborates with the Atmospheric Composition Virtual Constellation of CEOS to monitor the status of current and upcoming satellite missions designed to measure atmospheric CO₂ and CH₄ at any scales. This includes missions operated by CEOS and CGMS agencies as well as private New Space organisations. Each mission’s objectives, capabilities and planned lifetime are idenitified in order to coordinate activities and highlight measurement gaps. A summary of these missions is available on https://ceos.org/ghg.

Further information on the CEOS-CGMS JWGClimate is available here, and on climate monitoring from space can be found here.

GSICS

BitAdmin — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Global Space-based Inter-Calibration System

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS) have implemented a Global Space-based Inter-Calibration System (GSICS), which is intended to establish a consistent calibration of satellite measurements from different instruments operated by different satellite agencies and to tie these measurements to absolute references. Accurate calibration of satellite instruments against common references allows taking the best benefit of space-based observations, in particular for climate change detection and improved weather and climate predictions.

To learn more about this initiative please go to https://gsics.wmo.int

SCOPE-CM

BitAdmin — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Sustained, Co-Ordinated Processing of Environmental Satellite Data for Climate Monitoring (SCOPE-CM):

The Sustained and Coordinated Processing of Environmental Satellite Data for Climate Monitoring (SCOPE-CM) group’s primary goal is to ensure international coordination and production of satellite-derived Climate Data Records (CDRs) in response to Global Climate Observing System (Global Climate Observing System | World Meteorological Organization (wmo.int)) requirements. CDRs are consistently-processed time series of uncertainty-quantified data, located in time and space, of sufficient length and quality to be useful for climate science or applications. Besides revealing patterns and relationships in a changing climate, CDRs strongly support climate modeling and process studies, and are often combined with social science and socio-economic data in government, academia and business.

SCOPE-CM was chartered by the World Meteorological Organization in 2008, and works closely with the CEOS-CGMS Joint Working Group on Climate (WGClimate). Specifically, the latter group maintains an international inventory of CDRs with which it identifies gaps when compared to GCOS requirements. SCOPE-CM works with space and meteorological agencies to fill these gaps, in particular by facilitating multi-agency cooperation in areas such as product development and maturation, data sharing and stewardship. SCOPE-CM also works with the agencies to ensure coordinated and sustained production of mature CDRs compliant with GCOS guidelines and best practices.

Read more about SCOPE-CM at www.scope-cm.org.

INITIATIVES

BitAdmin — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

There are a number of major initiatives resulting from CGMS: