The World Meteorological Organization is an intergovernmental organization with a membership of 193 Member States and Territories. The President of the World Meteorological Congress, its supreme body, is Gerhard Adrian as a successor of David Grimes. The organization is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It followed on from the International Meteorological Organization, founded in 1873, a non-governmental organization. Reforms of status and structure were proposed from the 1930s, culminating in the World Meteorological Convention signed on 11 October 1947 which came into force on 23 March 1950. It formally became the World Meteorological Organization on 17 March 1951, and was designated as a specialized agency of the United Nations.
The organization
WMO has a membership of as of May 2019. The was signed 11 October 1947 and established upon ratification on 23 March 1950. The WMO hierarchy:
The , the supreme body of the Organization, determines policy. Each member state and territory is represented by a Permanent Representative with WMO when Congress meets every four years. Congress elects the President and Vice-Presidents of the Organization and members of the Executive Council; and appoints the Secretary-General.
The Executive Council implements Congress decisions.
The Secretariat is an eight-department organization with a staff of 200 headed by a Secretary-General, who can serve a maximum of two four-year terms.
The annually published provides details of global, regional and national temperatures and extreme weather events. It also provides information on long-term climate change indicators including atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, sea level rise, and sea ice extent. The year 2016 was the hottest year on record, with many weather and climate extremes, according to the most recent WMO report.
In keeping with its mandate to promote the standardization of meteorological observations, the WMO maintains numerous code forms for the representation and exchange of meteorological, oceanographical, and hydrological data. The traditional code forms, such as SYNOP, CLIMAT and TEMP, are character-based and their coding is position-based. Newer WMO code forms are designed for portability, extensibility and universality. These are BUFR, CREX, and, for gridded geo-positioned data, GRIB.
WMO states that "the International System of Units should be used as the system of units for the evaluation of meteorological elements included in reports for international exchange." The following units, which include units which are not SI units, are recommended by the WMO for meteorological observations:
Degrees clockwise from north for wind direction, or alternatively on the scale 0-36, where 36 is the wind directly from north and 09 is the directly wind from east.
Region III consists of the states of South America, including France as French Guiana is an overseas region of France. It has a total of 13 member states and no member territories:
Region IV (North America, Central America and the Caribbean)
Region IV consists of the states of North America, Central America, and the Caribbean, including three European states with dependencies within the region. It has a total of 25 member states and 2 member territories. The member states are:
Region V consists of 21 member states and 2 member territories. The member states are:
Region VI (Europe)
Region VI consists consist of all the states in Europe as well as some Western Asia. It has 50 member states:
States with membership in more than one region
A total of ten member states have membership in more than one region. Two nations are members to four different regions, while eight are members of two regions. These nations, with their regions, are as follows:
