23 March 2010: Each year, on 23 March, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), its 189 members and the worldwide meteorological community celebrate World Meteorological Day around a chosen theme. This year, the theme is “60 years of service for your safety and well-being.” The Day commemorates the entry into force, on that date in 1950, of the WMO Convention creating the Organization.

In his message to mark the Day, Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of WMO, highlighted the Organizations’ pioneering role in contributing to focus attention on global warming and climate change, including the release in 1976 of its authoritative statement on the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the potential impacts on the Earth’s climate. He underscored the Organization’s efforts to ensure human safety and well-being in sectors such as natural hazard warning systems and effective preparedness, management of water resources, agriculture and food security, health, transportation, tourism and others. He paid “tribute to the meteorological community worldwide working together continuously beyond all borders to save and protect people, their homes and their livelihoods.”
Also for the celebrations, the Organization prepared a special booklet that outlines the WMO’s historic achievements and illustrates sixty ways that WMO makes a difference in our daily lives. A ceremony at the WMO premises included addresses from Osvaldo F. Canziani, former Co-Chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Walter R. Stahel, a prominent expert in insurance economics and risk management associated with climate change. The audience also had an opportunity to see some of the paintings by the contemporary artist Remi Benyamin that were inspired by satellite images. [World Meteorological Day 2010] [WMO Press Release] [Message by WMO Secretary-General]