 Thank you. All right. Good morning everybody and it's a great pleasure to be here in spite of the fact that I to shorten my holidays as I was said by Julia this morning It's really privileged to attend this meeting to be invited on behalf of WMO to speak and I think I'm very grateful also for the Department of State and Secure World Foundation for Organizing this event because it's very true that space weather is a global challenge so I'm Just in a nutshell without spending too much time like to recall that the world mythological Organization WMO is the specialized agency of the United Nations for meteorology understood as weather and climate issues operational hydrology and Related geophysical sciences and so there's nothing in this which explicitly refers to space weather However, very important decisions have been made Few years ago. First of all in 2011 when members in the WMO Congress Recognized that a coordinated effort by WMO members is needed to protect against the global hazard of space weather One thing is to recognize a need for an effort another thing is to recognize that WMO has to play a role in this respect And this was a major decision made last year at the WMO Congress again to engage in international coordination of operational space weather monitoring and forecasting with the view to support protection of life property and critical infrastructures and Here I would like to echo the words of you I picked a few minutes ago saying that yes we need framework to coordinate operational activities and The the the objective here is really to enable members to establish operational space weather services in sharing observation data and products sharing best practices ensuring interoperability of the various Observations and the various products which are delivered ensure standardization In order in particular to coordinate a response to some major requirements And one priority today is to coordinate a response to IQ requirements for aviation So I'll come back to these points later on but first of all I would like to say that we have Before reaching this decision we established an interprogram coordination team of space weather Six years ago which already involves experts from 26 countries including seven also seven international organizations including is a for instance and One of the co-chair is the dr. Ansager terry ansager who is very actively Helping this this team to progress and today We are aware that there are a number of existing space weather forecast centers or regional warning centers many of them are members of the so-called ISES international space environment service and We could go through many of these Many of the centers for instance say well, I don't know if it works, but for instance, so well okay, well Each of them has is issuing forecast for instance this is Australia and China Canada etc. etc. We heard about of course Noah Swipsey and You came at office presented by by market, etc All these centers are doing a remarkable job but what is missing today is To put all this into a common framework in order to have a global system making sure that products can be interoperable with each other making sure also that they are complementing each other of course you need to have some some parallel work which is Stimulating but sharing the data etc. And in this respect WMO has agreed to develop a four-year plan for space weather this plan is still Needs to be endorsed by the next executive council, but it's been already supported by the Congress so it's I'm pretty sure that it will be endorsed next June and What this plan addresses maybe you can treat the fine print, but I will say in just a few words in a nutshell in the bottom Row these are system level activities The foundation is to enable to work on observation to work on data management to work on science and methodology Then the intermediate row is to work at the product and services level Requirements developing best practices for specific applications and training capacity building at the upper level is just coordination Communication what we're doing doing today today is an important event in order to raise awareness in order to communicate on what needs to be done and what is being done just to Give a few more details at the system levels activities That the idea is to coordinate Observational assets and plans to ensure continuity and interoperability of space-wide observations whether they are space-based or ground-based Continuity long-term continuity in think the point was made a few minutes ago by juicy to take advantage when relevant of the integration of meteorological observations and Space-weather observations because in many cases there can be commonalities in particular the number of space-weather monitoring payloads about meteorological satellites for instance And also to support the information exchange through the WM information system Through this framework through these standards practices and policies mentioned was made earlier this morning To W more resolution 40, which is one element of this policy of data exchange Also to dialogue with mythological and climate community in terms of modeling verification, etc At the service level activities the idea is first of all to organize WMO members To deliver coordinated services responding to IQ requirements and I'll provide some detail later on But also to prepare for extreme events in a multi has a disaster risk reduction approach to analyze requirements for applications including other applications such as ionospheric disturbances and With impact on GNSS satellite operations ground infrastructure such as power grays, etc so we're not only The idea is not only to talk about that is the purpose is not only to say that we need to cooperate But to actually start action to do this So let's indicate briefly what is being done in terms of space-weather observation We did not wait for the adoption of the plan In fact, we started to work on these observation issues a few years ago through this ICT SW But just to give an idea of what can be done You know, it's one of the jobs of WMO is to ensure that we have observing networks which are operational for weather and climate and hydrology and a lot of a number of networks are Existing we have thousands of Oceanic boys for instance in the ocean we have several dozens of metal across satellites maintained by WMO members but spating the space-based observing system there are hundreds of Monitoring station of the atmospheric composition around the world Tens of thousands of weather stations on the continents aircraft ships, etc. All these are operational network which are delivering huge amount of data every day which are maintained etc and Corresponding to certain standards and manage according to certain metadata standards, etc. So the idea is to not only Maintain such observing networks for weather for climate for upper-ocean parameters for atmospheric composition, but also for space-weather And the first step is to develop Requirements so this ICT SW team has already worked in delivering a first set of observing requirements Which are documented in the database and kept under review Which address various applications. This is a step for a basis for maintaining a gap analysis issuing us what we call a statement of guidance for future observations and for instance in the among the the the guidance will be a priority to expand and maintain long-term continuity of solar solar wind observations of Comprehensive ionosphere monitoring and and through also the near real-time data availability of those data which exist But that not necessarily available now needs to be shared. So this is one step and then an example which is just quite new is to build on this in order to make plans and We are maintaining what we call a vision of the space of the observing system Today we're working on the vision of the space-based observing system in 2040 and as part of this vision There are several items which belong to space-weather observations which have been identified already This is still to be endorsed. This is still in progress But just to show the the approach what we are working on Because once we have a common vision which is shared by all the WMO members Then it's very likely that the plans of the various members will converge into Contributing to meet this vision At least this is how it has been working so far for weather and climate observations So I'm I trust that it will be the same for space weather In terms of space weather services to international air navigation WMO and IQ are working closely together In fact, they are both responsible to establish a regulatory framework for what is called Meteorological service for international air navigation, which is a topic of IQ and X3 and WMO technical regulations. So these are legally binding documents where are specified the commitments of the various countries to deliver information to support aviation and in this context Space environmental parameters have a critical impact has been said already We need to monitor these hazards to support decision-making to minimize the risk through alert warning forecast saying when Things are going to happen. How long it will last where how severe referring to some standard scales And we need to make sure that the information is consistent globally because the users are cross border It has been said already This is Why we are heavily involved in collaborating with IKO and the definition of space weather services to global aviation with a number of other players and Today we're working on the concept of operations of IKO and the for instance in the United States The FAA is heavily involved in leading this effort The aim is to have an amendment of the IQ and X3 entering into force in November 2018 So this is a very concrete deliverable which we are aiming at in terms of disaster preparedness and We can certainly Encourage the examples to follow the examples of countries such as the UK as explained by Mark Gibbs a few minutes ago We should make sure that all the members identify space weather in their national risk registers should encourage incorporating space weather in the multi hazard early warning schemes and foster common best practices in terms of adopting common hazard scales and fostering data exchange Just to conclude because I think we are short of time I'd like to say that space weather is a science in progress But routine operational services are delivered already by centers around the world to respond to the needs of an increasingly vulnerable society International coordination is without any doubt required to strengthen observations to strengthen data exchange to expand best practices and ensure that Things are interoperable and standardized a priority to support aviation The benefit will be to improve services to leverage the capability of existing centers sharing observation effort sharing development efforts and WMO is providing a collaboration framework for its members to pursue these goals and here I would like to insist just on these words We should not say WMO is doing that so members don't don't need to act No, it's just a contrary WMO is doing that which means that WMO members Agree to share some effort within WMO because they are convinced that in doing Things together they will benefit of it and the whole community will benefit of it. So thank you very much for your attention