The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is designing the new WMO Information System (WIS) to “dramatically extend WMO Members' ability to collect and disseminate data and products. It will be the core information system utilized by WMO Members, providing linkages for all WMO and supported programmes associated with weather, climate, water, and related natural disasters. It is being built upon the Global Telecommunication System of WMO's World Weather Watch, using standard elements and at a pace feasible for all Members.” (Source WMO Web site) All over the world, Met services exchange daily data operationally via the Global Telecommunication System of WMO in an interoperable way since years but the WIS will provide access to this information system to new partners via a WEB portal.
At the same time the European Directive INSPIRE establishes an infrastructure for spatial information in Europe to support Community environmental policies, and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment. It aims at improving availability and interoperability of environmental information in Europe. The portal Vgisc implemented in Meteo-France will answer the INSPIRE requirements.
The INSPIRE Directive recommends to use standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.(OGC®). The OGC is an international consortium of more than 385 companies, developing in a consensus process publicly available geospatial standards.
Last but not least, the OGC® and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to enhance the development and use of geospatial standards. In order to reach interoperability between the implementations of these standards by meteorological and oceanographic data providers a thematic Domain Working Group (DWG) has been created in 2009. This OGC Meteorology and Oceanography DWG is to provide an open forum for work on meteorological and oceanographic data interoperability, and a route to publication through OGC's standards ladder (Discussion paper / Best Practice / Standard, and, if appropriate, to ISO status), thence giving a route for submission to WMO CBS for adoption.
As a matter of fact, the ability to easily exchange atmospheric meteorological, climatological and oceanographic information in a timely and useful fashion is becoming increasingly important. If the existing standards will facilitate cross domain interoperability, they still require improvements to fit to the specificities of these data, which are in general multidimensional, continually evolving, highly spatial and highly temporal in nature.
Meteo-France is fully involved into all these initiatives. This paper will picture the understanding Meteo-France is having of ”the impact technology is having and will have on research, operations, the business of our environmental sciences, and the public” bringing its contribution to the theme the AMS Annual meeting is emphasizing this year.
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