HKO launches new website for World Weather Information Service

23 June 2014

The Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) today (June 23) announced the launch of a newly revamped website for the World Weather Information Service (WWIS) which has been in operation for more than a decade. The WWIS website (http://worldweather.wmo.int) was developed and maintained by the HKO on behalf of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide authoritative and reliable online weather information from national meteorological and hydrological services from around the world. In addition to the brand new user interface, the website also integrated the latest web technologies including geographical information system (GIS) to provide a number of user-friendly new features, such as user-customised homepage and list of favourite cities, tool for sharing weather forecasts with friends, news from the WMO, etc. Furthermore, if users visit the website with mobile devices, the website will be switched automatically to the new mobile version which provides a smoother user experience.

The Secretary-General of the WMO, Mr Michel Jarraud, congratulated the HKO on the launch, saying, "The World Weather Information Service website provides an authoritative source for the global community to obtain reliable weather forecasts for cities around the world. It is an excellent example of collaboration between international meteorological communities to better serve the public worldwide."

The Director of the HKO, Mr Shun Chi-ming, said, "We are privileged to have the opportunity to collaborate with the WMO in this endeavor. We are very happy to bring new features to the website and provide better weather service to the public and media around the globe."

The WWIS website is the world's first website featuring official city forecasts issued by the respective official weather services. The WWIS was declared fully operational by the WMO in 2005. In 2008, the WWIS website won the prestigious Stockholm Challenge Award in the Environment Category. MyWorldWeather, the mobile app version of the WWIS, was launched on iPhone and Android platforms in 2011 and 2013 respectively. The WWIS website is popular with cumulative page views exceeding 1.3 billion. At present, 133 WMO members provide official weather forecasts covering more than 1,700 cities on the website. The website is available in 10 different languages in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Figure 1: New website of the World Weather Information Service