World Meteorological Day - 23 March 2018
The
International Meteorological Organization became the World Meteorological
Organization on 23 March 1950. Maldives became a member of WMO on 1st
June 1980. At present, there are 185 member states and 6 member territories
under this organization. March 23rd is marked worldwide among its
member countries as World Meteorological Day. “Weather-Ready, Climate-Smart” is
the theme chosen for World Meteorological Day, 2018. Weather, climate, and
water are vital to public well-being, health, and food security. But they can
also be destructive. High-impact events like tropical cyclones, heavy rainfall,
heatwaves, droughts, have taken lives and livelihoods throughout the ages. But
today, climate change is leading to an increase in the intensity and frequency
of some of these events.
It
is no surprise that, for the second consecutive year, the environment was by
far the greatest concern raised by global leaders in the World Economic Forum’s
Global Risks Report. These included extreme weather; biodiversity loss and
ecosystem collapse; major natural disasters; man-made environmental disasters;
and failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation. Extreme weather events
were seen as the single most prominent risk.
On a
global perspective, 2017 was one of the three warmest years on record and was
the warmest year without an El Niño. Long-term climate change as a result of
greenhouse gas emissions commits our planet to a warmer future, with more extreme
weather and water shocks. (WMO statement).
During
2017, the maximum temperature recorded over the Maldives was 33.9oC,
the lowest temperature was 20.2oC, maximum wind speed recorded was
57 miles per hour and heaviest daily rainfall was 189 millimeters.
Past
4 years saw a rapid development in service and activities of Maldives
Meteorological Service (MMS). Some of which include MMS organizational
structure development to attract and retain highly qualified staff for this
service. The aviation weather service of MMS acquired the ISO 9001:2015
certification which was recommended by International Civil Aviation
Organization (ICAO) and WMO. Specialized staff trained to comply with WMO
Qualification System (QS) requirement joined the Met service during this year.
Airport weather information systems (AWIS) were installed in almost all of the national
airports for monitoring near real-time weather information from the airports.
Doppler
weather RADAR plays an important role in the early warning system. However, the
RADAR which remained unserviceable since 2009 was brought back to operation now
by the enormous contribution we received from the Government.
There
is an ongoing project “to enhance weather and climate monitoring and data
management capacity of MMS for reducing the vulnerability of climate change in
the Maldives”. Under this project, the graphical weather presentation studio
was upgraded to record at high definition (HD) quality. Additional 25 Automatic
Weather System (AWS) will be installed in different islands and they are
expected to be operational by July 2018. For an un-interrupted delivery of
weather services, a backup power system would be installed soon. To comply with
the latest scientific developments and to maximize the application of weather
data and information, human resource development in related fields are one of
the major ongoing components of this project.
