2025 - Celebrating 75 Years of WMO Science for Action

By WMO Secretary-General Professor Celeste Saulo

WMO – its 193 Members and its Secretariat – will be celebrating the Organization’s 75th anniversary as a specialized agency of the United Nations in 2025. The WMO Convention was enacted on 23 March 1950, creating the World Meteorological Organization which officially became a specialized agency of the United Nations exactly a year from that date. Since then, the scientific work of WMO, through its network of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services and research institutions, has provided high-quality weather data and forecasts and climate assessments and projections for policy and sustainable socioeconomic development and related weather, water, climate and environmental warnings to better protect populations. The work of WMO has highlighted the need for global action to the threat of climate change.

Through perseverance and dedication, WMO Members have created, maintained and extended the Earth system observation network and shared the collected data, have continuously improved and refined forecasting and services, have improved capacity through knowledge sharing and have invested in further research and development. So much has been achieved that listing them all would fill this entire Bulletin.

Let’s just recall the World Climate Conferences:

• The First World Climate Conference, convened by WMO in 1979, led to alerts about climate change and resulted in the creation of the World Climate Programme (WCP), the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 by WMO and United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP).
• The Second World Climate Conference in 1990 led to the establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol, and to the creation of the Global Climate Observing System
  (GCOS).
• The Third World Climate Conference in 2009 defined the areas where climate science could contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and the goals of the Hyogo Framework for Action on Disaster Risk Reduction, and led to the establishment of the Global Framework for Climate Services.

Today many challenges lay ahead. Climate change is impacting our lives, early warnings are a priority to save lives and mitigate disaster risk, and more science and research is needed to further improve the quality of forecasts and to guide policy and decision-making. It is important, therefore, that WMO Members and Secretariat take the time in 2025 to pay tribute to the technicians, meteorologists, hydrologists, climatologists and researchers in various fields who have made a difference in our lives over the last 75 years and who face these challenges full on.