History

In 2006, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Commission for Climatology (CCl) WMO OPAG 2 group unanimously agreed to the creation of a world archive for verifying, certifying and storing world weather extremes.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Commission for Climatology (CCl) appointed a Rapporteur on Climate Extremes to keep an official, unbiased list of world weather extremes. In 2006, Dr. Randy Cerveny was named the "Rapporteur of Climate Extremes". At a task meeting of the WMO Open Programme Area Group II (OPAG 2) held in Tarragona Spain on August 20-22, 2006, Dr. Cerveny proposed the creation of a world archive for verifying, certifying and storing world weather extremes.

Members of the inaugural WMOCCL OPAG2 committee for the World:

  • Craig Donlon (United Kingdom)
  • Jay Lawrimore (United States)
  • Rainer Hollmann (Germany)
  • Thomas C. Peterson (United States)
  • Wan Azli Wan Hassan (Malaysia)
  • Xiaolan Wang (Canada)
  • Zuqiang Zhang (China)

WMO Commission for Climatology agreed that such an archive was useful and necessary. They agreed that a set of procedures should be established such that existing records are verified and made available to the public and that future weather extremes records are verified and certified. Consequently, they created a Rapporteur for Extreme Records to carry it out. The Rapporteur (currently Dr. Randy Cerveny) to work closely with the CCl Expert Team on Climate Monitoring in the development of the archive.

Many of existing world weather record extremes in the archive are based from past existing record extremes from official sources, e.g., "Climates of the World" (NCDC, US) and "Weather and Climate Extremes" (TEC-0099 US Army Corp of Engineers). The primary goal of this database would be to archive and verify extreme record events, such as the highest/lowest recorded temperatures and pressures on the Earth, the strongest winds, the greatest precipitation (over different time intervals) as well as records involving the world's most destructive storms, hurricanes and tornadoes. In the past, without the existence of such an official designate to determine and maintain regional or world records of extreme weather events, the critical supportive documentation needed to assess the validity of a weather record event was often hard to find or simply did not exist. Consequently, the CCl Extreme Weather and Climate Archive includes, where available, the metadata, such as date of occurrence, site location, equipment and other factors associated with the event.

The coming future weather extremes would be evaluated by a committee consisting of:

  • the WMO CCl Rapporteur for Climate Extremes,
  • the chair of the OPAG 2 group,
  • the chair of the overarching CC1 group,
  • a regional authority, and
  • as necessary an authority associated with the specific type of record (temperature, pressure, hail, tornado, tropical cyclone, etc.).