The World Weather Information Service (WWIS) website (http://worldweather.wmo.int/ ) operated by the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) on behalf of the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) won the prestigious Stockholm Challenge Award 2008 in the Environment category. The jury commended the website as "having a strong vision, global objectives, a robust sustainability model and demonstrating information exchange between national and international organizations sharing weather data."

The Stockholm Challenge (http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/ ) is a prestigious international competition. It is a major event in the Information Technology (IT) community. Some IT people even label it as the Oscar Award for the IT sector.

The 2008 awards ceremony was held inside the Blue Hall of the Stockholm City Hall on 22 May, which is the same place for the banquet of the annual Nobel Prize Ceremony in December. Dr CM Tam, Senior Scientific Officer of the HKO received the award on behalf of the HKO and WMO that evening. Apart from the WWIS, four other Finalists from Hong Kong were also invited to the awards ceremony.

The WWIS enables the public worldwide to have easy access to authoritative weather forecasts for cities in all corners of the globe, issued by the official meteorological services. They are the authorities responsible for making the meteorological observations locally and so know best the weather at those locations.

The website is an international cooperation project. At present, it has six language versions. The HKO is the lead organization in setting up and running the WWIS website in English. Weather forecasts were supplied by countries and territories participating in the project daily for updating webpages in the site. The HKO, as the data hub, also re-distributes the received weather forecasts to hosts of the other five language websites.

Dr CM Tam, Senior Scientific Officer of the HKO (second to the left)
received the Environment category trophy of the Stockholm Challenge at the Stockholm City Hall

Dr CM Tam of the HKO with the Trophy and Mr E Mardle,
Chairman of the Grand Jury of Stockholm Challenge
after the awards presentation ceremony at Stockholm

Those who are interested are welcome to browse the following webpages:
http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2008/pre0523e.htm
http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2007/pre0111e.htm
http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2006/pre0912e.htm
http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2005/pre0323_1e.htm
http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2004/pre1209e.htm
http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2002/pre1209e.htm
http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2001/pre1208e.htm