Message by the President of the 55th General Assembly to the World Meteorological Organization on World Meteorological Day, 23 March 2001 “Volunteers for Weather, climate and water”

Voluntary cooperation is the corner stone of meteorological and hydrological information flow worldwide. Voluntarism in this context entails essentially also the voluntary cooperation of 185 members of the World Meteorological Organization, which contribute to the global observation networks and programmes. The nearly 40 years old World Weather Watch (WWW) programme is one significant fruit of this cooperation. It coordinates data collection, processing, and dissemination, in a standardized manner, of meteorological and oceanographic information delivered from every corner of the world. The magnitude of the voluntary effort going even into this programme is vast – 10.000 land-based and 1.000 upper air observation stations, 7.300 ships, 900 buoys out at sea, and 3.000 aircrafts, summing up to a total of over 15 million data characters, and 2.000 weather charts, collected, processed, and transmitted nearly in real-time. - We take weather forecasts for granted - we rarely come to think about the immense global voluntary effort supporting these services, yet they affect all sectors of life, agriculture, water-resources, civil aviation and maritime transport, tourism and many other areas in individual countries and regions. El Nino phenomenon is one of the phenomena affecting economies.

At the time of high technology and satellite communication, the voluntary “storm spotters”, radio amateurs, and rescue workers are important - on the spot when earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes hit. These people save lives and mitigate economic losses with their willingness to serve and to share.

I should like to congratulate the World Meteorological Organization for a very timely theme of the World Meteorological Day this year. It shows how different sectors of society can work together in a mutually complementary manner, thus reinforcing the message of the International Year of Volunteers 2001.