Michael J.Coughlan - World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

From its inception in 1950, the World Meteorological Organization had inherited a long and proud tradition in Climatology from its predecessor, :he lnternational Meteorological Organization. Since :he time that meteorological observations began in a systematic way during the latter half of the 19th century, there was a realisation of the enormous cotential wealth that would accrue from the logging and archival of the data. As the early databases grew, in terms of the number of stations and the .ecord lengths, this potential began to be realised t.hrough a wide range of applications of the data. These applications included agriculture, human -ealth, building design and, by the meteorological zommunity itself, improving the understanding of its s.vn science and in particular the ability to develop -euristic models with which to forecast the weather.