The Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring is a joint project of the National Meteorological Services and other institutes from Belgium, Finland, Germany, Sweden and The Netherlands. The objective of the project is to set up a system to provide atmospheric and oceanographic data sets from (primarily) operational geostationary and polar orbiting meteorological satellites for climate monitoring, research and applications at regional European scale, for some products on a global scale. Initial operational SAF products are related to clouds, radiation budget, ocean status and water vapour content in the atmosphere. SAF operations are foreseen to start in 2004. (C) 2002 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.