Matheus Manente Meteored Brazil 03/23/2023 11:56 7 min 
World Meteorology Day is celebrated every March 23rd. Remember their main achievements and technological innovations and discover what awaits us in the future.
We live on an interconnected planet. There are no national and political borders for the atmosphere and oceans. This is the philosophy that has driven the work of the global meteorological community since 1873, when pollution from human industrial activities was just beginning to be emitted.
These 150 years of evolution have produced technologies that are now an integral part of our daily lives, things that today even seem trivial. On this World Meteorology Day we will review the most important achievements and find out what the future of atmospheric research holds for us.
Meteorology was a necessity for the Navy
Weather forecasts come from the Navy. Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury and Admiral FitzRoy were the promoters of this science and as early as 1860 were sending warnings of storms to sailors off British shores.
Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury and Admiral FitzRoy were the promoters of this science and as early as 1860 were sending warnings of storms to sailors off British shores.
After the end of World War IIthe reconstruction of national economies and the boom in shipping and air transport culminated in one unprecedented expansion of telecommunications and scientific observations on land, on water and in the air.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that scientists first understood how the ocean and atmosphere interact. to affect the weather. In the 1980s, meteorological studies led scientists to understand the extent of large marine ecosystems for the first time.
Restoring the ozone hole, the greatest ecological triumph
Around the same time Meteorologists theorized and confirmed that CFCs produced by humans They caused the destruction of the ozone layer Stratosphere, the largest and only protective shield on earth against harmful solar radiation.
The projection to 2065 shows what would happen to the planet without the Montreal Protocol, right: the ozone layer would be at risk across the planet. Image: NASA/GSFC.
Today we no longer hear anyone talking about this problem. That’s because, In 1987 the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer was passedthereby eliminating from industrial production the chemical compounds responsible for its destruction.
The Montreal Protocol has been signed by every country in the world and remains the only universally ratified treaty to date. It is considered the greatest ecological triumph of all time.
This international action has had extremely positive results. It is estimated that The measures have prevented millions of cases of skin cancer and cataracts worldwide, and that the ozone layer will fully recover by 2065.
Space satellites and GPS
Planetary sciences have continued to develop remarkable technologies for observing and modeling the atmosphere. Satellites have revolutionized earth observation since the 1960s, the atmosphere and the oceans. Their main goal has always been the prediction of natural phenomena.
Weather satellites and GPS have changed the way we view our planet and live our lives, and they were technological innovations directly linked to the weather.
in the 1990s, This prompted NOAA to develop revolutionary methods of positioning and surveyingwhich became nothing short of GPS, the technology now used for location and navigation around the world.
The future of meteorology
Today, meteorology focuses on a different problem. The IPCC predicts that climate change will have negative impacts across the planet in the coming decades.: more intense heat waves, longer summers and shorter winters.
The current process of climate change will lead us to increasingly extreme and recurring phenomena in the coming decades.
But beyond that Climate change intensifies the water cycle. That goes both ways, resulting in heavy rains and flooding in some places and intense droughts in others. The oceans are more acidic, sea levels have risen and our glaciers are melting.
World Meteorological Day poster. Image: WMO.
Without immediate and vigorous action, global warming will cause uncontrolled damage. If greenhouse gas emissions immediately reach net zero, global temperatures could still stabilize with a 1.5°C rise.
Along with so much bad news, there are other reasons to be happy. Solar, wind and battery power costs have been reduced by up to 85% since 2010. A growing body of directives and legislation has increased energy efficiencyreduced deforestation rates and accelerated the deployment of renewable energy sources around the world.
Today, on World Meteorology Day, the role of meteorology is to return to the beginning of everything: to remember that the atmosphere and oceans have no national and political borders, and so on The entire planet urgently needs to act to ensure that future generations can survive.ry prosper. This is the future we all want.