4
BAMOS
Sept 2017
June
President’s report
The President of the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) visits Melbourne
David Grimes, President of WMO (as well as Assistant Deputy
Minister and Head of Environment and Climate Change in
Canada’s Meteorological Service) visited Melbourne during the
recent AMOS Anniversary Symposium.
David brought several important messages:
1. The science community recognises there is more to do in
researching and understanding polar regions, including
their impact on mid-latitude weather systems. The need is
increasing as trends in the cryosphere are observed along
with equator-pole temperature gradient changes. WMO
wishes to help strengthen the observations framework,
support enhanced research and widen information and
services related to polar weather and climate. If you are
interested, talk to Global Cryosphere Watch, the Polar
Space Task Group and/or the Polar Prediction Project.
Australia stands to benefit from this polar focus and these
initiatives . David welcomed Australian participation.
2. The world is witnessing widening capacity gaps, as detailed
in the graphic. David, as President of WMO, is calling on the
developed world to consider the implications of this from
wide-ranging perspectives, for the scientific integrity of
our monitoring work, for our research, our services and the
global collective science effort.
3. WMO will continue to serve as a convening power to bring
together the growing number of players (in meteorology,
weather services and related “big” data) to strengthen
our collective knowledge and enhance services for
society. As part of this, David is keen to see a greater role
for Meteorological (and Oceanographic/Hydrological)
Societies in some WMO activities, such as the quadrennial
World Meteorological Congresses. He also sees benefit to
existing Societies considering ways to help small nations
avail themselves of benefits of professional societies that
may be relevant to them, but are currently out of their
reach.
Food for thought from the President of WMO—for individual
scientists, for science groupings and for AMOS.
AMOS Extended Council Meeting, Melbourne,
0915–1215, 24 August
Taking advantage of extra AMOS members in Melbourne for
the Symposium, as well as senior representation from the Royal
Meteorological Society (RMetS), we held what we called (for
want of a better term) an “extended” Council meeting on the
Thursday morning.
We heard presentations on: the RMetS experience with formal
accreditation; the Engineers Australia experience with skills
update programs (their program called CPD – Compulsory
Professional Development); Science and Technology Australia’s
new strategic plan, and consideration of shared operational
resources for Societies.
We also more briefly discussed: future collaboration—
Australian Meteorological Association (AMETA), RMetS, and
others; emerging needs of Regional Centres; expansion of the
AMOS Membership base and potential for an AMOS chapter (or
Special Interest Group) for broadcast meteorologists.
All of these are difficult to squeeze into our regular AMOS
Council and Executive meeting agendas, so it was a useful
morning packed with discussion. A more detailed report from
this meeting will also appear soon.
Mary Voice
Past WMO President
John Zillman (L) with
current
President
David Grimes (R), and a
key message from the
President of WMO.