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The Global Climate Observing System
as the observational foundation
for climate services
John W. Zillman, Chairman, Global Climate Observing System Steering Committee
F
or more than 100 years, international cooperation in the
collection of meteorological observations has enabled
National Meteorological Services (NMSs) around the
world to keep their local communities informed on the changing
patterns of weather and climate. Increasingly integrated obser-
vation of the atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial domains of
the global climate system since the establishment of the World
Climate Programme (WCP) in the wake of the First World
Climate Conference in 1979 has underpinned the past 30 years
of remarkable progress towards the understanding, modelling
and prediction of climate on global, regional and national scales.
The Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), which was
established – following the Second World Climate Conference
(WCC-2) in 1990 – by the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission
(IOC) of UNESCO, the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) and the International Council for Science (ICSU),
will provide the essential observational founda-
tion for the new world climate services system
that is expected to emerge from World Climate
Conference-3.
The basic concept of operation for an NMS providing
weather and climate services at the national level has
been well understood for a long time.
1
In addition the
end-to-end service provision architecture from obser-
vations through data collection, processing, modelling,
prediction and service delivery and application was
well reflected at the international level in the 1960s and
1970s by the WMO World Weather Watch.
2
The same overall end-to-end architecture of the
traditional NMS and the World Weather Watch is
equally valid for the provision of the much wider range
of climate services now becoming both possible, as a
result of integrated observation and modelling of the
climate system, and necessary, as a result of the increas-
ing worldwide focus on climate risk management and
adaptation to climate change.
The WCP was established in 1979 with four compo-
nents:
• World Climate Data Programme (WCDP)
• World Climate Applications Programme (WCAP)
• World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)
• World Climate Impacts Programme (WCIP).
3
The first two of these were strongly service and appli-
cations focused, with the third aimed at providing
the scientific basis for climate prediction in support
of, among other things, the eventual introduction
of climate prediction services at the national level
in WMO Member countries. By the time of the
WCC-2 in 1990, however, it had become clear that
the observational foundation to support the WCRP,
and especially the increasingly wide range of climate
information, monitoring and prediction services, was
severely inadequate and deteriorating and that there
was an urgent need for a greatly strengthened global
climate observing system.
In the light of the conclusions of the WCC-2,
WMO and three of its WCP cosponsoring partners
O
bserving
, P
redicting
and
P
rojecting
C
limate
C
onditions
An integrated climate observation and service system
Social and Economic benefits
OCEAN
ATMOSPHERE
LAND
ADAPTATION
MITIGATION
SERVICE PROVISION
DATA MANAGEMENT
(Collection, assimilation) RESEARCH & MODELLING
OBSERVATION
APPLICATION APPLICATION
APPLICATION APPLICATION
APPLICATION
UNFCC (POLICY)
GCOS (OBSERVATIONS)
WORLD
CLIMATE
SERVICES
SYSTEM
(WCSS)
IPCC (ASSESSMENT)
WCRP (RESEARCH)
The end-to-end operation of an integrated climate observation, research and
service system, which delivers social and economic benefits by informing
decision making in a range of climate sensitive application sectors