Quality of weather forecasts in Russia hasn't changed due to delay in data transmission from European satellites - Roshydromet head

MOSCOW. March 25 (Interfax) - The delay in meteorological data transmission by the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) to Russia should not influence the quality of weather forecasts, Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring (Roshydromet) head Igor Shumakov said.

"We have managed to solve this problem as well, it will practically not influence the quality of meteorological forecasts. We are now getting information from other meteorological satellites, mainly Russian, we are checking the quality," Shumakov told reporters on Friday.

"It will be possible to talk about quality a little later," he said.

"According to our experts' estimations over the past three days, it has not declined," Shumakov said.

"It is very important" to receive global data on weather conditions, he said.

"Meteorology knows no borders. It's impossible to forecast weather in a separate country, having no picture for the entire northern hemisphere, like in our case. The average speed of atmospheric movement is 50 km per hour. If you want to forecast what the situation will be in five days, you need to know today what is happening 2,500 km away, and that is already the Atlantic. Therefore, it's impossible to have good forecasts not knowing what is now happening in the Atlantic," he said.

"Russia is fully observing all its obligations as a member of the World Meteorological Organization," Shumakov said.

"We have not received any alarming signals yet. They are also observing their obligations, I hope they will continue to do so," he said.

Roshydromet research head Roman Vilfand, for his part, told reporters that "residents of our country, professional consumers of prognostic products have not even felt [the data delay]."

"I hope [they] will not feel changes in the quality of weather forecasts," Vilfand said.

Russian National Resources Minister Alexander Kozlov said earlier on Friday that EUMETSAT had started delaying data transmission from meteorological satellites to Russian partners.