About

About weather archive

Mission statement

In 2006, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Commission for Climatology (CCl) WMO OPAG 2 group unanimously agreed to the creation of a world archive for verifying, certifying and storing world weather extremes. They agreed that a set of procedures should be established such that existing record extremes are verified and made available to the general public and that future weather record extremes are verified and certified.

They agreed that future weather extremes would be evaluated by a committee consisting of the WMO CCl Rapporteur for Climate Extremes, the chair of the OPAG 2 group, the chair of the overarching CC1 group, a regional authority, and as necessary an authority associated with the specific type of record (temperature, pressure, hail, tornado, tropical cyclone, etc.). The committee would recommend a finding to the Rapporteur. The Rapporteur for Climate Extremes would have final authority and responsibility for certifying the record.

All accepted and verified record extremes (with corresponding metadata) are to given on this website.

Inquiries for consideration of new world/regional weather records should be made to the Rapporteur for Climate Extremes: Randy Cerveny (cerveny@asu.edu)

Members of the inaugural WMOCCL OPAG2 committee for the World:

  • Craig Donlon (United Kingdom)
  • Jay Lawrimore (United States)
  • Rainer Hollmann (Germany)
  • Thomas C. Peterson (United States)
  • Wan Azli Wan Hassan (Malaysia)
  • Xiaolan Wang (Canada)
  • Zuqiang Zhang (China)

Current managers of the WMO Weather and Climate Extremes Archive are:

  • Dr. Randy Cerveny, School of Geographical Sciences, Arizona State University
  • Bohumil Svoma, School of Geographical Sciences, Arizona State University