Floods are the most common natural hazards with the largest impacts on society. Although exceptionally devastating floods distort the trend, flood impact records show that the number of related fatalities is gradually decreasing thanks to, among others, better early warning systems; however, damages to land and property appear to be increasing due to insufficient prevention, economic growth and a lack of flood-sensitive land use planning. The Associated Programme on Flood Management (APFM) promotes an Integrated Flood Management approach to minimize related loss of life and impacts on livelihoods through protective measures while maximizing the net benefits derived from the efficient use of floodplains.

The purpose of the WMO Public Services (PS) is to strengthen the capacities and skills of WMO Members to meet the needs of the users they serve through delivery of comprehensive weather services, with a particular emphasis on public safety and welfare, and to foster a better understanding by the public of the capabilities of their respective National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs), and how best to use the services that NMHSs deliver.

One of the purposes of WMO is to further the application of meteorology to aviation. Our mission, therefore, is to enable aeronautical meteorological service providers of WMO Members to provide high-quality, timely and cost-effective meteorological and climatological information and decision-support services to international civil aviation users worldwide.

As a worldwide network of operational centres operated by WMO Members, the WMO Integrated Processing and Prediction System (WIPPS) makes defined products and services operationally available among WMO Members and relevant operational organizations for applications related to weather, climate, water and the environment.  High-quality products and services are generated using advanced science and technology such as Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) and Earth system modelling, better observations, improved data assimilation, increased computing power, and enhanced knowledge of weather dynamics and physics. These advancements have led to more accurate predictions, benefiting operational meteorology, hydrology, oceanography, and climatology. However, there is a significant disparity in forecasting capabilities among WMO Members, with developed Members benefiting more from these advancements compared to developing and least developed countries due to limited resources.   WIPPS serves as a framework to address this gap for sharing operationally meteorological, hydrological, oceanographic, and climatological data. WIPPS allows Members to access and utilise the most advanced numerical models’ data and applications, leveraging scientific and technological advancements in Earth system modelling. WIPPS is facilitated by the WMO Information System (WIS), which supports international data exchange. By expanding the range of designated and participating centres, WIPPS enhances the global data-processing and forecasting system, enabling a broader range of applications to strengthen the world’s weather, climate, water and related environmental services.  WIPPS was previously known as the Global Data-processing and Forecasting System (GDPFS).

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.

The WMO World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) promotes research to improve weather prediction and its impacts on society for minutes to months ahead. The improvements in science and operational predictions are driven by international cooperation, which can drive sustainable development.WWRP's key objectives are:Advance research of the Earth system on times scales from minutes to months. This research, through the science-for-services value cycle approach, provides locally and regionally actionable weather information,Improve the warning process to account for increasing risks and the evolving nature of extreme weather impacts, andQuantify and reduce uncertainty in predictions on time scales from minutes to months.In addition, communication of forecasts, warnings and their uncertainty, and indication of the impacts of these warnings, raise new challenges for weather-related approaches for the full value cycle. To address these, WWRP adopts an interdisciplinary collaborative approach, linking social scientists, academia, and Early Career Scientists.