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The Executive Council of the World Meteorological Organization has adopted a decision on the international exchange of data on the Earth system. From now on, in addition to traditional meteorological, climatic and hydrological indicators, information on the state of the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere and space weather will be collected. The WMO stressed that this is a new meteorological service in the era of climate change and frequent natural disasters.

A resolution on this issue should be approved at an extraordinary session of the World Meteorological Congress with the participation of all 193 States. It will be held in October 2021. The new strategy opens the way for a large-scale update of the policy in the field of free and unrestricted data exchange.

"To meet the demand for high-quality meteorological services, it is extremely important to improve the exchange of data on weather, climate, water and ocean. Serious gaps in data and weather observations, especially in Africa and island States, have a significant negative impact on the accuracy of early warnings, both locally and globally," said WMO Secretary — General Professor Petteri Taalas.

He is confident that the revision of the WMO data policy will benefit the entire international community. From now on, the WMO will have a mechanism for a unified approach to collecting all data.

"This is a great milestone and a historic moment," said Michel Jean, president of the WMO Infrastructure Commission, which developed the resolution on data policy approved at the virtual session of the Executive Board held from June 14 to 25.

Accurate and timely forecasts largely depend on the regular international exchange of weather and climate data, seven days a week, 365 days a year, often within a few minutes of real time.

The observational data are fed into numerical forecasting models, and the results of these models are used as the basis for meteorological and climate services.

The current WMO data collection policy is set out in three resolutions dealing separately with weather, water and climate. The new WMO resolution covers seven areas: in addition to traditional meteorological, climatic and hydrological data, it now also includes information on the state of the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere and space weather.

Photo Unsplash/J.Towner - According to the WMO, the previous decade was the hottest during meteorological observations.

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