The role of meteorological/environmental satellites in eastern Europe

Broadcasts from Meteosat are in the form of either real-time full resolution or one half hour-late degraded resolution imagery (known as WEFAX). Both provide a guaranteed service for monitoring weather-producing disturbances on a `continental´ scale and form the basis for `Nowcasting´ or very-short term forecasting. This scheme involves the near- real-time monitoring of rainbearing clouds and their extrapolation from 0 to 6 hours ahead. For severe convective storms (thunderstorms) this can be particularly important because of their very rapid growth and relatively short lifetimes. Some schemes are in use in eastern Europe, in the Czech Republic for example, but more development could usefully take place more widely with existing satellite facilities