Climate Data: The past and present

Historical and weather and climate observations and monitoring products are essential for health risk assessment, planning and for the development of climate-informed early warning systems. They are also important in assessing the efficacy of climate-sensitive interventions. Accurate weather and climate monitoring and forecasting requires a massive international coordination of data collection and sharin. In 1963, the World Meteorological Organization implemented the World Weather Watch as a system for facilitating this coordination. The Global Observing System provides observations of the air and the ocean surface from surface weather stations and ships, ocean buoys, weather balloons, satellites and other sources. The observations are collected by National Meteorological and Hydrological Services and various satellite agencies and consortia, all of which collect the observations according to specified standards. The Global Telecommunication System enables the communication of the observations to a network of centres that produce global or regional weather analyses and forecasts.