World Meteorological Day is celebrated on 23 March of each year. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Executive Council decided that the theme for the year 2007 would be ‘Polar meteorology: understanding global impacts’, as a contribution to the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007‑2008, which is being co-sponsored by WMO and the International Council for Science (ICSU).
The Polar Regions are keepers of the Earth’s climate archives. They also act as a kind of early warning system of what could be expected by the planet as a whole. Consequently, there is a great need for reliable weather forecasts in these areas, although the Polar Regions are generally distant from widely populated zones.