8
BAMOS
Special Issue
• This cooperation is … voluntary and is based on the principle that each Service will provide all that it can to , and obtain all that it requires from , the common fund ; and
• This cooperation is … possible only under peaceful conditions and … It should be planned and established exclusively on ( that ) basis .
The Plan envisaged the progressive convergence of data collection and exchange for weather and climate . The historical distinction between operational and research data gradually faded as the WMO-ICSU GARP emerged as the research support for the WMO WWW and the GARP Global Weather Experiment ( Zillman , 1977 ) became the prototype for the future operational WWW .
The 1979 Global Weather Experiment was a great success ( Bengtsson , 1983 ; Zillman , 1983 ) and it provided the basis for the ‘ Integrated Systems Study ’ that guided the re-design the World Weather Watch in the mid-1980s ( WMO , 1987 ). I have argued ( Zillman , 2013 ) that the World Weather Watch is the most successful international system yet devised for sustained global cooperation in science or in any other field . Certainly , in the WMO community by the mid-1980s , there was an immense sense of satisfaction that we now had a global framework which would provide all sectors of meteorology with the basic data needed to support :
• Public weather services provided by National Meteorological Services ( NMSs ) through their national mass media ;
• Value-added services provided by both NMSs and the private sector ; and
• Meteorological research by the academic , public and private sectors .
As we wrote our WMO ten-year plan 1988 – 1997 ( WMO , 1987 ), the main remaining challenge for international meteorology seemed to be that of progressively extending to all countries the capabilities and quality of service that was then becoming possible in the advanced countries .
Commercialisation
It was in this climate of satisfaction , pride and optimism that WMO suddenly found itself confronted with what soon turned out to be an existential threat to the system of free and unrestricted international exchange of data , products and scientific knowledge that we had all taken for granted through the early years of the World Weather Watch and GARP .
We were caught largely unprepared by the extension to meteorology of the market fundamentalism of the 1980s ( Self , 1993 ). The problem was not so much from the increasing commercialisation of meteorological service provision , which was already well established through public-private partnership in the US and some other countries ( White , 2001 ) and entirely consistent with the free exchange of basic data as a public good . Rather , it was from commercialisation and privatisation of the formerly publicly funded NMSs themselves in ways that forced them to look for what they could sell in order to be able to fund their continuing basic operations . And , for most of them , in both developed and developing countries , this was their precious national observational data .
The WMO Executive Council tried to help Members address what was initially referred to as ‘ the commercialisation issue ’ through the introduction of clearer distinction between what had recently been defined as ‘ basic ’ and ‘ specialised ’ services . But , as NMSs withheld from exchange through World Weather Watch the data that they needed to sell , it soon became clear that the real problem was becoming that of loss of data from the common pool . The issue escalated rapidly and the WMO language changed from ‘ the commercialisation issue ’ to ‘ the data exchange issue .’
Belatedly , the 1987 and 1991 WMO Congresses committed Members to a policy of maintenance of free and unrestricted data exchange but it was too late . Over the next few years , the community split between those who felt we must retain ‘ free and unrestricted exchange ’ at all costs and those who had concluded that , without knowing how a commercial data world would work , we probably had no choice but to accept that ‘ free exchange ’ of meteorological data would become an inevitable casualty of ideological and economic change in the wider world far beyond our control .
With NMSs withholding previously freely exchanged data from the WMO Global Telecommunications System , their neighbouring Services saw little choice but to retaliate . The long-standing WMO tradition of mutual support and trust among NMSs was giving way to competition and mutual distrust . Tensions and even legal action erupted between NMSs , between members of the WMO Executive Council and between WMO Member governments ( WMO , 2019b ).
As the 1995 WMO Congress approached , there was widespread speculation that we were facing the end of the established system of international cooperation in meteorology and were on the verge of a global meteorological data war .