The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) was briefly introduced in Educational Resource earlier. At the present time, WMO consists of 193 members , including 187 Member States and six Member Territories.

WMO members (hereafter Members) are distributed in six geographical regions (Table 1): Region I (Africa), Region II (Asia), Region III (South America), Region IV (North America, Central America, the Caribbean), Region V (South-West Pacific) and Region VI (Europe).

Hong Kong, China and Macao, China are the two Member Territories within Region II. And there are 33 Member States in the region including China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Mongolia, Viet Nam, Thailand, Myanmar, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Cambodia, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Bahrain, Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Maldives, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Uzbekistan, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation.

Corresponding to the geographical divisions (or meteorological regions) above, there are six Regional Associations (RAs) composed of Members in the respective regions. These RAs are responsible for coordinating meteorological, hydrological and related activities in their respective regions. As the territories of the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan straddle over Region II and Region VI, both countries are also assumed Members in Region VI. In other words, individual Member may belong to more than one RA due to geographical consideration.

As mentioned earlier, there are altogether six Member Territories in the world. Apart from Hong Kong, China and Macao, China, could you name the remaining four Member Territories? The answers can be found in the WMO website.

By the way, the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) and the WMO have a long history of co-operation and the Observatory has been supporting the WMO’s initiatives and fostering regional and international co-operation for many years. Besides developing and managing the two global weather information websites, namely World Weather Information Service, and Severe Weather Information Centre, which are the world’s first websites featuring global official city forecasts and weather warnings on behalf of WMO, the Observatory is also designated by WMO as one of the Regional Specialized Meteorological Centers for Nowcasting. HKO will continue to support the meteorological and hydrological services in the Asian region on nowcasting hazardous weather and capacity development activities for contributing to the Early Warnings for All initiative.