The 41st meeting of the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS-41) was held in the Tsukuba Congress Center from 8 to 12 July 2013, hosted by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

More than 100 executives and experts from meteorological satellite operators and international organizations such as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) attended the meeting and had active discussions on the coordination of space-based observation.

In the meeting, JMA gave a presentation on the plan of the next satellites, Himawari-8/9, as well as the status of steady operations of the current satellites, MTSAT-1R/2 (Himawari-6/7). Since Himawari-8 will be launched in 2014 as the first satellite of the next generation in the world, the presentation attracted the interest of the participants. JMA will make its best efforts to develop the Himawari-8/9 project in order to meet users' strong expectations for utilization of its multi-channel, high-frequent and high-resolution data in various fields.

Taking this occasion, Mr. Alain Ratier, Director-General of the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and his delegation visited JMA headquarters in Tokyo on 9 July. Mr. Ratier and Dr. Mitsuhiko Hatori, Director-General of JMA, exchanged latest information on each other's next generation satellites, and confirmed the importance of the technical cooperation between EUMETSAT and JMA on development of satellite products. The delegation then observed JMA's operational centers where products driven from meteorological satellites are used as key data of services.

Group photograph of CGMS-41

At the plenary meeting of CGMS-41	Dr. Masashi Nagata, Director-General of the Observations Department gave a presentation on Himawari-8/9.	Dr. Anthony Rea, Chair of WMO's expert team, was interviewed about CGMS-41 and Himawari-8/9 by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK).
EUMETSAT delegation on a courtesy visit to Dr. Hatori	Mr. Ratier and Dr. Hatori with Harerun, JMA's mascot	At one of operational centers of JMA