Short answers, pulled from the story.
The World Meteorological Organization was formally established by the World Meteorological Convention, signed on the 11th of October 1947. The Convention entered into force on the 23rd of March 1950, and the WMO began operations as a United Nations intergovernmental organization the following year.
The WMO originated from the International Meteorological Organization, a nongovernmental body founded in 1873. The IMO grew out of the first international meteorological conference convened from late August through early September 1853, which was initiated by Matthew Fontaine Maury of the US Navy.
As of 2023, the WMO has a total membership of 193, comprising 187 member states and 6 member territories. Eight United Nations member states, including Equatorial Guinea and San Marino, are not members of the WMO.
Celeste Saulo of Argentina has served as Secretary-General since 2024. The President of the WMO is Abdulla Al Mandous of the UAE. The Secretary-General may serve a maximum of two four-year terms.
The WMO did not win the Nobel Prize directly, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was jointly created by the WMO and the United Nations Environment Programme, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for work on anthropogenic climate change.
The WMO maintains several standardized code forms for exchanging meteorological data. Traditional formats include SYNOP, CLIMAT, and TEMP. Newer formats include BUFR for general meteorological data and GRIB for gridded geo-positioned data used in weather prediction.