172 DWD Klimastatusbericht 2003 CM-SAF Initial Operations started P. Hechler, M. Werscheck By 31 December 2003 the 5 years Development Phase of the Satellite Application Fa- cility on Climate Monitoring (cf. KSB 97, p. 76-81; KSB 99, p. 128-129; KSB 2000, p. 188-189) ended formally. Subsequently by 01 Januar 2004 the Initial Operations Pha- se (IOP) started, based on formally signed agreements between Deutscher Wetter- dienst (as Operations Leading Entity) and EUMETSAT as well as between Deutscher Wetterdienst and its CM-SAF IOP partners SMHI (National MetService of Sweden), KNMI (National MetService of the Netherlands), FMI (Finnish Meteorological Institute), RMIB (National MetService of Belgium) and MeteoSwiss (National MetSer- vice of Switzerland) as a new CM-SAF partner. On the occasion of this important milestone, an ‘IOP Kick-off meeting’ was held at DWD premises in Munich from 21 – 24 January 2004. DWD President Udo Gärtner, EUMETSAT Director-General Dr. Tilmann Mohr, MPI for Meteorology Director Prof. Dr. Hartmut Grassl and further high-ranking persons attended the meeting and ex- pressed the outstanding strategic importance of the CM-SAF activity for politicians, decision makers as well as the research and climate community. These arguments were also explained to the press during a joint DWD-EUMETSAT press conference on the first meeting day. The next days comprised joint meetings of the CM-SAF Stee- ring Group (the CM-SAF programmatic authority) and the CM-SAF Board (the CM- SAF technical authority). In the course of these meetings the basic IOP working ar- rangements were discussed and agreed upon including detailed activities for the first 6 IOP months. Fig. 1 DWD premises in Munich Fig. 2 VIP`s at the CM-SAF IOP Kick - off 1st row from left: M. Gärtner, T. Mohr, W. Kusch, 2nd row: Prof. Graßl. Klimastatusbericht 2003 DWD 173 Fig. 3 Model of Meteosat Second Generation Fig. 4 CM-SAF Board members on the roof of the Munich DWD premises In retrospective it can be assessed, that the CM-SAF Development Phase was a huge and successful effort of all contributing partners. With a tight and challenging schedule and a set of internal and external reviews the basis had been build to start initial operations up from 2004. The aim of the IOP is to consolidate the operational CM-SAF system, to extend parts of the products to the Inner Arctic and the full MSG disk, to continue R&D and –as a crucial point- to attract the users of the CM-SAF product suite. To meet the latter aim, a second CM-SAF user workshop is planned within the second half of 2005. In 2007 the transition to the Full Operations Phase is foreseen, starting with a major reprocessing event to provide a consistent product set of the IOP period. For further information see http://www.cmsaf.dwd.de contact: [email protected] Literature Klimastatusbericht 1997, p. 76-81; Klimastatusbericht 1999, p. 128-129; Klimastatusbericht 2000, p. 188-189.