10
BAMOS
Special Issue
Building on Resolution 40
It is my impression , however , that the economic and policy foundation for free exchange has been significantly strengthened since 1995 . Public forecast and warning services have long been cited as the text-book example of an economic public good ( Heilbroner and Thurow , 1994 ) but there is now a much clearer picture of how the non-rival and non-excludability properties of most basic meteorological infrastructure and data make their provision to societally acceptable levels a fundamental responsibility of government ( Zillman and Freebairn , 2001 ). In 1999 , the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen identified inequality and the provision of public goods as the two great challenges confronting capitalism ( Sen , 1999 ) while , in 2000 , another Nobel Prize economist , Joe Stiglitz , provided strong support , on economic grounds , for the government provision of essential public forecast and warning services in the digital age ( Stiglitz , Orsag and Orsag , 2000 ). And , on the basis of their service to most people in most countries and to future as well as present generations , the theory of global public goods ( Kaul et al , 1999 ) provides a compelling case for identifying internationally exchanged meteorological data as the example par excellence of a global public good ( Gunasekera and Zillman , 2004 ). But the debate has continued ( Blum , 2019 ) and it is clear that more work is needed to build a robust economic framework for the complementary roles of the public , private and academic sectors in global meteorological and related infrastructure operation and service provision ( WMO , 2019a ; Verkooijen and Ban Ki-moon , 2021 ).
The Australian involvement
( not included in WMO Data Conference presentation )
Australia has a long and distinguished history as a Member of the IMO and the WMO , and as a strong supporter of , and contributor to , international meteorological data exchange ( Gibbs , 1994 ). Its role , along with the US and the USSR , as host of one of the three World Meteorological Centres of the World Weather Watch established in 1963 ( Zillman , 2013 ), made it a major beneficiary of the satellite revolution and the main southern hemisphere contributor to international sharing of meteorological data and products . In the late 1980s , however , the Bureau of Meteorology came under strong pressure from Government to commercialise its data and products as part of broader policies on interdepartmental charging and commercialisation of Government services . In due course , the Government reaffirmed the public good nature of most meteorological data and services ( Harris , 1995 ) but , in 1995 , the Bureau became entrained in legal action by MetService New Zealand and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ( ACCC ) which put it under pressure to withhold data in conflict with the letter and spirit of Resolution 40 ( Day , 2007 ). The MetService / ACCC issue was eventually resolved through the elaboration of a Basic Product Set consistent with Resolution 40 ; and the Government response to a subsequent Productivity Commission Report on cost recovery by government agencies ( Owens et al , 2001 ) reinforced the Bureau concept of meteorological data as a public good accessible to all for the cost of making it available . Australia played a key role in the international implementation of Resolution 40 through Dr Geoff Love ’ s Presidency of the WMO Commission for Basic Systems ( 2000 – 02 ) and Dr Angus McEwan of CSIRO led the complex IOC negotiations , completed in 2003 , which extended the principles of Resolution 40 to oceanographic data exchange . Australian scientists and economists have continued to contribute strongly to the international debate on data exchange ( Gunasekera et al , 2018 ) including through the development of the ‘ AMOS Position Statement on Data Sharing in Meteorology and Oceanography ’ ( AMOS , 2019 ). And , when the WMO started work on a new unified policy for Earth system data in 2019 , the leadership of the WMO process fell naturally to the Bureau ’ s former Chief Scientist , Dr Sue Barrell , supported by the WMO Infrastructure Department headed by the Bureau ’ s former Data Manager , Dr Anthony Rea , with Dr Barrell ’ s successor as Chief Scientist , Dr Gilbert Brunet , in his capacity as Chair of the WMO Scientific Advisory Panel , chairing the WMO Data Conference session on ‘ Data Exchange for Earth System Monitoring and Prediction ’.
Conclusion
These recent developments enable me to conclude on a note of historical reassurance and optimism by stressing that Resolution 40 of the 1995 WMO Congress was a solution to a hopefully once-only existential crisis in international meteorology . But it was neither a perfect nor a permanent solution and international meteorology has changed greatly in the past 25 years . It is clearly time to design a more unified and more robust framework for the exchange of the much larger quantities of more diverse data now available on the Earth system . I believe the 2020 WMO Data Conference provides a great opportunity to build a new and better framework without first having to go through a crisis of the kind that my generation went through to get us to Resolution 40 .