The World Meteorological Organization grew out of the non-governmental International Meteorological Organization

Background

WMO traces its roots to 1873, when the Vienna International Meteorological Congress tasked a committee with drafting rules for an international body to exchange weather information across borders. The resulting International Meteorological Organization (IMO) came into being at a congress in Rome and was a non-governmental organization. By the mid-1930s that status was seen as incompatible with the importance of meteorology, and the IMO Secretariat was moved to neutral Switzerland in 1939. The IMO became the World Meteorological Organization in March 1950, when its Convention entered into force. In 1951 WMO was designated a specialized agency of the United Nations, with a remit covering meteorology, hydrology and related geophysical sciences.