The World Weather Information Service website, available in six different language versions namely English, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish and French, is developed and operated by the Hong Kong Observatory since 2001 for the World Meteorological Organization of the United Nations to provide a centralized source of authoritative weather observations and forecasts of over 1,200 cities in 117 countries/territories including those from the Least Developed Countries for free access of the international community for planning activities from leisure travel to disaster relief operations.

It is the vision of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide world leadership in international cooperation in weather for the safety and well-being of people throughout the world. The weather information will originate from National Meteorological Services (NMSs) who are responsible to operate the official weather observing network and follow rigorous forecasting procedures regulated by the WMO. However, their official forecasts are not always easily accessible to the public, particularly from overseas. A single authoritative Internet portal to present official and reliable weather information of any city around the world to the international community is a cooperation among NMSs to bring the benefit of weather service directly to the people of the whole world.

In view of the expertise possessed by the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) in both public weather services and website management, HKO was tasked by WMO in 2000 to develop and host the World Weather Information Service (WWIS) website and to coordinate with WMO Members on the collection of their weather information. In 2001, the English language version of WWIS was launched. By 2007, six equivalent language versions are available and over 117 NMSs participate including many from Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to supply their latest weather and climate information to HKO on a daily basis.

On the WWIS website, each participating NMS has its own webpage showing its name and logo, hyperlinks to its official website and that of the local tourism authority (if available), city forecasts of temperatures and weather for the next few days and climatological information. Through WWIS, even the LDCs are able to make their weather forecasts widely known to the international community for the first time.

Objectives

1. To develop and enhance the methodologies for the international exchange of public forecasts issued by NMSs via the Internet;

2. To provide a centralized source of official weather information on the Internet;

3. To encourage the international media and the public to make good use of official weather information provided by NMSs; and

4. To enhance the visibility of NMSs, especially those of developing countries, so as to strengthen the public recognition of the weather services they provide.

It is our goal to involve the entire meteorological community in this worthwhile WMO project and to help meteorological services of LDCs to gain international exposure. It is planned to enhance the WWIS to also display warnings of hazardous weather issued by NMSs on tropical cyclones, heavy rain and thunderstorms.

The successful implementation of WWIS is only possible through the use of ICT. Weather information is a perishable commodity which is updated minute-by-minute. Hence, it is necessary for participating NMSs to dispatch the latest information by the quickest and most convenient means, that is through the Internet by ftp, email or webform which will normally be received at HKO within minutes for consolidation and uploading to the WWIS English language version. The other language hosts then download the updated information via Internet to simultaneously refresh their respective versions. The international community can access the latest weather information posted on the WWIS website at any time and anywhere with a PC, PDA or mobile phone.

The successful implementation of the WWIS English language version launched in 2001 has spurred the development of equivalent language versions by meteorological services in other regions with HKO providing them with technical support and data. By 2007, there are a total of 6 language versions in operations namely, English (Hong Kong, China, 2001), Arabic (Oman, 2003), Chinese (China, 2004), Portuguese (Macao, China, 2004-2007; Portugal, 2008), Spanish (Spain, 2006) and French (France, 2007). The Deutscher Wetterdienst, the national weather service of Germany, is in the process of developing a German language version.

The Hong Kong Observatory was also requested by WMO to organize training courses for other countries in order to share our experience in web hosting and webpage design with NMSs. Technical assistance was provide to enable developing countries, including the Least Developed Countries, to build their Internet-based weather services so that they can join the WWIS project to make their official weather forecasts widely known to the international community for the first time.

WWIS is cross linked with the Visiteurope webpage ( http://www.visiteurope.com/ )and webpages of many NMSs.

The World Weather Information Service (WWIS) website operated by the Hong Kong Observatory of Hong Kong, China for the World Meteorological Organization is an excellent example of how exchange of technology and cooperation between National Weather Services (NMSs) can benefit the international community. WWIS has established itself as a centralized source of authoritative and reliable weather information. By the end of 2007, a total of 117 NMSs (Figure 1) are providing official weather forecasts for 1,254 cities to WWIS (Figure 2) on a daily basis. Over 8 million WWIS webpages, available in English, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish and French (Figure 3), are accessed by the international public per month (Figure 4) through the Internet.