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Weather and the World Meteorological Organization - a UK perspective

David N. Axford (former Deputy Secretary-General WMO) Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

Formation of the World Meteorological Organization

The year 1996 sees the 50th anniversary of the Extraordinary Conference of Directors of National Meteorological Services, held in London in February 1946. This meeting brought together the members of the long- standing International Meteorological Organ- ization to discuss the draft of a new World Meteorological Convention, which had already been prepared before the Second World War.

The UK Meteorological Office was much involved in the negotiations - indeed the Con- ference set up an international committee un- der the presidency of Sir Nelson Johnson (then Director-General of the Meteorological Of- fice), with Dr F. W. Reichelderfer (USA) and Mr A. Viaut (France) as vice-presidents, in order to produce a definitive draft. Following further meetings in Paris and Washington, a text for the Convention was agreed. The fore- fathers of the World Meteorological Organiza- tion (WMO) showed their great wisdom by ensuring not only that the Organization had independence and world-wide agency status, but also that the national representatives on the governing body (Congress) should be profes- sional meteorologists, i. e. the Directors of their respective National Meteorological Services, intimately concerned with the day-to-day pro- vision of their products, and not politicians or diplomats.

The Convention, which also specified the con- stituent bodies of the Organization, was signed in October 1947 in Washington by the representat- ives of 31 countries; it became formally estab- lished, after ratification by 30 governments, on 23 March 1950, the day now celebrated each year as World Meteorological Day.

Growth of WMO, 1950 to the 1980s

From its beginning WMO was officially recog- nised as the Specialised Agency of the United Nations (m) with a specific mandate in the field of meteorology (later this was extended to include a mandate for operational hydrology as well). Thus the Members were eligible to par- take in the technical assistance programmes for the economic development of developing coun- tries with the co-operation of the UN Develop- ment Programme (UNDP). This status also ensured that WMO collaborated with the other relevant members of the UN family*, in particu-

* Acronyms of international organizations: FA0 - Food and Agriculture Organization (of the m), ICAO - International civil Aviation Organization, IMO - International Maritime organization, IOC - International Oceanographic Commission, ITu - International Telecommunications Union, UNEP - United Nations Environment Programme, UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, WHO - World Health Organization.

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lar with UNESCO and its IOC, ICAO, FAO, IMOj ITU, WHO, and, after its creation in 1972, UNEP. These links have become increasingly impor- tant over the past ten years since the political consequences of unintended anthropological environmental degradation, and the possibility of climate change, have come to the fore.

Unlike most of the other UN agencies, how- ever, WMO has not grown a large central Secre- tariat in order to meet its mandate. Although the Secretariat, located in Geneva since the late 1950s, increased from the original 24 staff at the time of the First Congress in 1951 to 246 posts in 1979, this number has remained con- stant since that date. The Secretariat is almost totally occupied in arranging the meetings of the co-ordinating bodies through which wMO’S Member states provide the resources to ensure that the scientific and technical mandates and programmes of the Organization are met.

WMO’s supreme body, Congress, is a general assembly of delegates representing the Mem- bers (currently numbering 173 states and 5 territories). It meets once every four years to set the policy, programme and budget for the ensuing four-year period. An Executive Coun- cil, whose 36 members are elected in their personal capacity, meets once a year in order to review the progress in implementation of the programme, and to consider and agree the proposals of the Secretary-General with regard to the use of the available financial resources, and to give guidance to the Secretary-General on policy matters where this is appropriate.

While these bodies provide the continuing administrative, financial and policy overview required, the scientific and technical work of the Organization is implemented through the work of the six Regional Associations, the eight Technical Commissions and the working groups and rapporteurs that they appoint.

The Regional Associations provide a forum for close co-operation between the Directors of the Meteorological Services in each geograph- ical region to deal with special problems of a regional nature. The regions are:

RAI - Africa, RAII - Asia, RAIII - South America, RAIV - North and Central America,

RAV - South West Pacific and, RAVI - Europe.

The Technical Commissions consist of inter- national technical and scientific experts from the Members, and they deal with the spe- cialised aspects of the science and its applica- tions. Their exact titles and nature have been changed and developed over the years since 1951, and are now:

CBS - Commission for Basic Systems, CIMO - Commission for Instruments and Methods of Observation, CHy - Commission for Hydrology, CAS - Commission for Atmospheric Sciences, CAeM - Commission for Aeronautical Meteorology, CAgM - Commission for Agricultural Meteorology, CMM - Commission for Marine Meteor- ology, and ccl - Commission for Climatology.

These Commissions form a forum and focus so that the leading experts in any particular field of meteorology, hydrology, climatology, etc., can be brought together, and to ensure that proposals and recommendations for action and co-operation on a truly global scale are made in order to meet the objectives and plans of the Organization and its Members. Each Commission is headed by a president and vice- president, and it sets up worlung groups, and appoints panels and rapporteurs from the Member countries in order to implement a revolving four-year programme and long-term plan which is agreed at a full meeting of the Commission once every four years.

UK involvement in WMO, 1950s to 1990s

As mentioned earlier, the United Kingdom was closely involved in setting up WMO, and, in- deed, the President chosen at the First Con- gress in 1951 was Sir Nelson Johnson, then Director-General of the Meteorological Office. Since then successive Directors-General (lat- terly, in the new era of the Executive Agency, Chief Executives) - Sir Graham Sutton, Sir John Mason, Sir John Houghton and Professor

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Julian Hunt - have acted as the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom with WMO, and have ensured that the stature of meteorology in the United Kingdom has been properly reflected by its full participation in all the appropriate constituent bodies Of WMO, and in the multitude of working groups, panels and rapporteurships of the Technical Commis- sions. It should be emphasised that, as Perma- nent Representatives of the UK with WMO, they had to represent all aspects of the national activities in meteorology and hydrology, not just those of the Meteorological Office, and that many of the international experts in the working groups, etc., come from other govern- ment departments as well as from the univer- sities and industry.

Within the Secretariat it is noteworthy that the Secretary-General for 24 years from 1955 until 1979 was Sir Arthur Davies who, before his appointment in 1955, had been Director of the then British East African Meteorological Department and the first President of RAI. Throughout the period, the United Kingdom has been well represented in the Secretariat at both professional and non-professional level.

Within the technical work of the Organiza- tion it is only possible to mention here a few areas where the United Kingdom has been active, and it should be clear that there are many other specialisations where the United Kingdom has made its mark. For example, the United Kingdom was one of the initiators of the basic World Weather Watch programme. This network, through its component parts, the Global Observing System, the Global Data- processing System, the Global Telecom- munication System, and lately the Global Data-Management System, provides the fra- mework through which all countries of the world exchange and receive meteorological data and products in order to make their daily weather forecasts. In the area of instrumenta- tion and observations the United Kingdom was a founder member and vigorous participator in the North Atlantic Observing System Board, which ran a network of observing ships in the North Atlantic from 1950 until the late 1980s. Within the WMO research programmes, UK meteorologists were active in the International Geophysical Year in 1952, the Global At-

mospheric Research Programme in the 1970s and, more recently, within the World Climate Research Programme with its emphasis on global warming and potential climate change.

The United Kingdom has also always taken an active interest in the Technical Cooperation Programme of WMO, and in its Education and Training Programme, both of which have pro- vided essential help to countries in the develop- ing world that have needed to enhance their services and discover those applications of the sciences which can be applied to deal with their particular problems, be they drought and de- sertification, or flooding and disaster pre- vention.

WMO from the 1980s to the present day - the new environmental issues

In 1979, because of growing worries in the scientific community concerning the possibility of human-induced changes to the environment and their potential to affect the global climate, WMO hosted the First World Climate Con- ference. This was a scientific and technical meeting which went largely unnoticed outside the scientific community. However, during the following five to ten years the continuing expo- nential increase in the quantity of carbon di- oxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, coupled in particular with a grow- ing understanding within the international poli- tical community that industrial activities can cause unexpected and widespread environmen- tal degradation, has brought WMO to the fore- front of the debates on climate and atmosphere-related issues.

Within the UN, politicians began to debate seriously the effects of global changes in the environment caused by the rapid changes tak- ing place in the worlds of politics, economics, population, technology, energy use and ecol- ogy. Many of the environmental concerns lay within the mandates of UN family agencies and programmes other than WMO - in particular with UNEP -but with regard to climate, climate change and global warming, WMO’s scientific expertise was clear. In 1988 WMO and UNEP together set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which has the objective of assessing the current scientific understand-

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ing of climate, the potential impact of any anthropogenic changes that might occur, and of considering possible response strategies. IPCC is a fully international panel, including representatives from all nations of the world, so it is a tribute to the status of UK meteorology that the first Chairman of Working Group 1, which was set up to assess the available scien- tific information on climate change, was Sir John Houghton.

Following the creation of the IPCC, a Second World Climate Conference was convened by WMO in 1990. This time the Conference had two parts - the first being a scientific and technical discussion from which a consensus of conclusions and recommendations emanated. These recommendations were then presented to the Conference in its second part which was held at government ministerial level. The open- ing ceremony of this part of the Conference was addressed by six heads of state, including, it should be noted, the Rt. Hon. Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister of the United Kmgdom. The agreed conclusions of the Sec- ond World Climate Conference, along with the assessments of the IPCC, were essential inputs to the UN Conference on Environment and Development which was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and at which the Framework Conven- tion on Climate Change was signed by over 100 heads of state. The Framework Convention has now been fully ratified, and came into effect at the First Conference of the parties held in Berlin in March 1995.

Other climate-related issues have also been addressed by WMO during the last ten years, notably in the areas of protection of the at- mosphere (for example, the ozone hole prob- lem), combatting desertification and drought, and sustainable agriculture in developing coun- tries, to mention a few. In the sphere of hydrol- ogy, WMO has been working on a new concept - a World Hydrological Observing System - to provide the infrastructure required with regard to drought monitoring, marine pollution from the land, and understanding the hydrological impact on the climate system.

The World Climate Programme (WCP) of WMO has also needed to respond to the chang- ing requirements of the times, and at an inter- governmental meeting on the WCP convened by

WMO in co-operation with six other organisa- tions (UNEP, UNESCO and its IOC, FAO, UNDP, and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU)) new thrusts were proposed in four areas of the Programme:

(i) Climate services for sustainable development.

(ii) New frontiers in climate science and prediction.

(iii) Dedicated observations of the climate system.

(iv) Studies of climate impact assessments and response strategies to reduce vul- nerability.

In particular, with regard to the observations required for climate studies, a Global Climate Observing System was set up by WMO, roc, ICSU and UNEP, with its base at the WMO Headquarters in Geneva. Much of the initiative for the development came from the United Kingdom under the leadership of Sir John Houghton.

Weather, climate and WMO in the future - a personal view

As can be seen from the above summary, the pace of change which is affecting WMO has accelerated over the last decade. The Organiza- tion has had to respond not only to the im- provements required in the networks, products and applications for the day-to-day meteorolo- gist, but also to the new pressures caused by the diplomatic and environmentalist demands cre- ated by the need to understand the climate system more fully, and to give immediate eg- pert advice.

This need to study the climate and its poten- tial for change has brought in its wake a grow- ing realisation of the importance of taking a broad interdisciplinary approach to the prob- lem. The changes taking place in the climate are affected by changes in the composition of the atmosphere, by changes in the quantity and quality of surface and ground water, by changes in the circulation patterns of the oceans, and even by changes in the characteristics of the land and ocean surfaces and the biosphere. This interdependence between the sciences has led to ever closer links between the relevant

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international agencies. It is not possible now to progress with climate understanding and pre- diction studies without involving all the rele- vant scientific disciplines - meteorology, hydrology, oceanography and ecology. It is also clear that environmental satellite activities which, because of their high cost, are operated by only a few nations at this time, also need to have an overall co-ordination mechanism to ensure the necessary standardisation required so that their measurements are compatible with each other, and are properly directed at the problems of the global climate.

It is my hope and expectation that the United Kingdom will continue to play a leading r61e in the definition of future policy and program- ming for WMO. Those responsible are, of course, fully aware of the changes which have occurred and are still occurring in the percep- tion of WMO within the world diplomatichnter- national community. WMO has, since its inception in 1950, always been seen as a small, efficient, specialised agency within the UN fam- ily. Its small size has ensured that it has been able to be cost-effective, with a rapid response to the requests of its Members. This has also enabled its affairs to come directly under the control of the concerned scientists/Directors of National Meteorological Services rather than politicians and administrators.

Recently the UN has been considering its structures and institutions with a view to im- proving its own efficiency, and with a view to realigning the mandates of its agencies and programmes with the new imperatives of the twenty-first century. In particular, the fields of environment and development have been un- der discussion, and specific changes have been raised. Perhaps the time is now ripe for the United Kingdom to consider whether there might be a means to bring the meteorologists, hydrologists and oceanographers even closer together in the interest of improving and facilit- ating the interdisciplinary linkages in the field of climate. A proposal to broaden WMO’s man- date to include, say, all hydrology and physical oceanography would of course require the agreement of the other UN agencies involved, in particular UNESCO and its 10c. Since the gov- ernment that represents the United Kingdom at UNESCO and IOC is the same government that represents it at WMO, it would be necessary for a unified national policy to be generated on an issue such as this. While such a development would no doubt raise many other issues and problems, this should not be allowed to stop the issue being discussed, since the future of WMO and the future of the climate change and global warming debates will remain inextricably linked as the next century unfolds.

Weather competition: “A memorable weather event” This competition attracted 16 entries and the judges were impressed by their standard. The three winning entries, by R. A. Drower, F. G. Thomas and J. S. Perkins, are reproduced below. The account by J. S. Perkins is somewhat longer than originally requested, but the judges agreed that this was merited in view of the background knowledge that was needed in order to fully appreciate the article.

The judges commented on how difficult it was to select the winning articles; most of the articles were scientifically interesting or amusing, and worthy of publication. Consequently, it is in- tended to publish more of the entries in the forthcoming months. I would, also, encourage potential authors to submit similar articles to Weather for possible publication in the future - I am sure readers will find them interesting.

The devastating floods of 10 July 1968 at Key nsham Ever since I was a young boy I had kept weather records at the family home situated near the River Chew at Dapps Hill, Keynsham, Avon. I never expected the elements to destroy, in minutes, my home-made weather station along with many nearby homes. On 10 July 1968 a flash flood swept along the Chew valley after an unprecedented storm.

After the deluge I managed to salvage my observations; they are abridged as follows: 10 July

storm began and continued until 14OOBST when the rain became lighter and intermittent. At 1845 BST continuous heavy rain commenced, tor- rential at times as small thunderstorms appeared to pass through the main rain area from the north

1968 - dry until 124oBST (1140GMT). A thunder-

Editor or - north-east. This pattern continued until