Michel Jarraud, WMO secretary-general
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The World Meteorological Organization, meeting in Geneva, Tuesday 24 May named Michel Jarraud to a third term as secretary-general, until December 2015. Jarraud won in the first round of secret balloting, out of a field of three candidates, winning over Mehmet Caglar, director general of the Turkish State Meteorological Service and Geoff Love, director of WMO’s Disaster Risk Reduction department.
Jarraud has held the job sincee 2003
The WMO will elect a president and vice-president Wednesday from a field of candidates: David Grimes from Canada, Ali-Mohammed Noorian from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tyrone Sutherland from the British Caribbean Territories, as well as first vice-president, Antonio Divino Moura from Brazil, second vice-president, Mieczslaw Ostojski, Poland, third vice-president, Abdalah Mokssit, Morocc.
The WMO is reviewing its programmes and priorities, and discussing the budget this week in committees. Decisions taken on a number of issues, including the proposed Global Framework for Climate Services, will be made in plenary sessions next week.
Lake Geneva
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva is home this week to a key global conference on how the world can adapt to climate change – disasters such as floods and hurricanes, but also the more subtle changes that affect agriculture, tourism and daily life.
The conference agenda is wide-ranging and includes improvements to early warning systems for disasters and how to provide more precise and more localized weather forecasting, needed by developing countries as well as industries in the developed world.
The meeting is hosted by Switzerland and organized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and a group of partners.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government will be pushing to strengthen Geneva’s role as the global centre for climate information when it participates in the Third World Climate Conference in Geneva 31 August to 4 September 2009. The conference will establish a system to improve the availability of climate information and predictions for government, the private sector, aid and other organizations.
Switzerland “considers climate information to be a key tool to strengthen society, particularly in developing countries, against the socio-economic consequences of climate change. Switzerland’s medium-term aim is to see the creation of the Global Framework for Climate Services and its embedding at the WMO (World Meteorological Organization). This would also serve to strengthen Geneva as a location for the coordination of future efforts in the dissemination of climate information,” Bern notes in a press release 25 June.
