Data communications
Data communications
The invention of telegraphic transmission gave birth to operational meteorology and Data Communications remains today its backbone. A complex system, the Global Telecommunication System (GTS) has been established decades ago by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) to permit the real time exchange of meteorological observations between all meteorological services of the world.
The rapid pace of change in global telecommunications and the progress of information technologies induce technical modifications of the GTS and changes in the working practices.
In Europe, deregulation of telecommunications is lowering the borders between national telecommunication markets and facilitating the emergence of several operators working at continental scale. A programme for a complete modernisation of the GTS in the Region VI (Europe) of WMO is at present running, led by the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF). This programme called RMDCN (Regional Meteorological Data Communication Network) will increase significantly the capabilities for exchange of data and products between all participating National Meteorological Services.
The EUMETNET Members all participate to the RMDCN Programme. They are also considering going one step further in developing the functional capabilities of their Data Communication infrastructure, aiming at the creation of an " intranet " capability. A preliminary study is underway to evaluate the potential usefulness of such a system for various meteorological applications. This system, called EUMIN at present (EUMETNET Meteorological Information Network) could for instance be used for distributed data bases, or distributed processing. To this end, the first phase of the UNIDART Programme (Uniform Data Request Interface) started on 1st September 2001. This study will establish the requirements and feasibility for a unified access system to all meteorological data using Internet technologies.
EUMETNET will also start in September 2002 the EMMA Programme (European Multiservice Meteorological Awareness) to provide through the Internet advance warning of meteorological risk to the European citizen.