Articles by theme

Article published in Volume 51, No. 2, April 2002

For the first few months of its existence, the World Meteorological Organization utilized as its Headquarters the offices of its predecessor, the International Meteorological Organization, which were in Lausanne, Switzerland. On 10 December 1951, the Secretariat was moved to its temporary Headquarters at Campagne Rigot, Avenue de la Paix, Geneva, Switzerland. This building,...

Kofi Annan was the ultimate incarnation of a true Statesman, always looking at the big picture. His perspective would stretch as far as possible into the future and with a remarkable skill for linking complex issues in very different fields. Although there are innumerous illustrations of this, I shall always remember his decisive role in the development and adoption of the Millenium Development Goals, without which it would have been impossible to reach the universal consensus on the Agenda for Sustainable Development and the associated SDGs a few years later. He was a true believer in multilateralism.

The WMO Global Campus initiative has sparked action for increasing collaboration to support the capacity-development needs of Members. The two components of the WMO Regional Training Centre (RTC) Argentina  – the University of Buenos Aires and the National Meteorological Service (SMN) – have taken a lead. How does a university and a National Meteorological Service collaborate at local, regional and global levels to stimulate a revolution in meteorology training?

The...

The middle decades of the twenty-first century will be a critical time for the meteorology profession. The effects of climate change will be clear and progressing in most regions (Hawkins and Sutton, 2012). The likely concurrent increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (IPCC, 2012) will place meteorological forecasting in a critical societal position. There will be opportunities for meteorology to provide new and exciting benefits to society through continued improvements in the accuracy of weather forecasts (Bauer et al., 2015). The growth of an efficient renewable energy sector (Frei et al., 2013), for example, would require accurate forecasts for a range of timescales from days to seasons ahead.