Satellites have become essential for routine use in meteorology and environmental monitoring. Fifteen years ago there were perhaps only a dozen or so user stations in the whole of Europe. Today there are nearly 1000 Metcosat stations alone. In addition there are many stations for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) polar orbiting meteorological satellites and a number of extensive ground networks to distribute these data further. There arc also many specialized processing facilities to extract information from these data. Europe also provides and makes extensive use of satellite data collection facilities to obtain and use environmental data from many remote locations.