Hong Kong's Presence in the World Meteorological Congress

17 June 2011

Mr Shun Chi-ming, Director of the Hong Kong Observatory, and Mr Lee Lap-shun, Senior Scientific Officer of the Observatory, attended the 16th World Meteorological Congress in Geneva, Switzerland, during 16 to 27 May 2011. The Congress is the supreme body of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and holds meeting every four years to determine the direction and the strategy of meteorological work worldwide.

During the Congress, Hong Kong, China made a number of presentations and interventions during discussions of various WMO programmes, including aeronautical meteorology, public weather services, disaster risk reduction and tropical cyclone.

Firstly, Hong Kong, China was invited by WMO to report on the latest development of its World Weather Information Service (WWIS) ( http://worldweather.wmo.int ) operated by the Observatory and propose the strategies of its future development. The proposal of developing a mobile version for WWIS was strongly supported by the Congress, recognizing that it would bring even better access by the public and the media to the authoritative weather information as issued by the weather services, and would further increase the visibility of WMO and its members.

In the capacity of the president of the Commission for Aeronautical Meteorology (CAeM), Mr Shun briefed the Congress on the major thrusts on aeronautical meteorology in the next four years, including new aeronautical meteorological personnel competency standards, quality management, meteorological services for the terminal area, improved warnings of en-route meteorological hazards and enhanced services for mitigating the effects of volcanic ash. The Congress was highly enthusiastic and a total of 55 interventions were made by WMO members on these subjects, fully supporting the above initiatives of CAeM. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Congress decided to make aeronautical meteorology a high-priority programme of WMO that should be suitably resourced to help its members meet the increasing needs of the aviation sector. For further information, please refer to the press release issued by WMO on 2 June 2011, which is available on its website at:
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_919_en.html .

Hong Kong, China also made a number of interventions at Congress to promote the standardization of tropical cyclone advisory and warning information issued by different regional weather centres. This is expected to improve the accessibility and understanding of the information by the public and the media through the Internet, and will also contribute to disaster risk reduction efforts of WMO and its members.

Messrs Shun (left) and Lee representing Hong Kong, China
at the World Meteorological Congress.

Shun Chi-ming (on screen) presenting the latest developments of the World Weather Information Service at the World Meteorological Congress.