6th Meeting of GCC Standing Committee for Meteorology Kicks off

Doha, October 20 (QNA) - The sixth meeting of GCC standing committee for meteorology and climate, hosted by the Civil Aviation Authority, represented by Qatar Meteorology Department, began sessions here today . In his keynote speech at the opening session, Dr Abdullah Al Hashim, assistant secretary general for human and environmental affairs at the GCC general secretariat praised the important role of meteorology in all walks of life and the impact of climate's elements on all human activities, stressing the importance of cooperation, coordination and link between GCC meteorology departments to exchange information and data on weather and climate. In a press statement on the sidelines of the meeting, Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed, Director of Meteorology Department, the Permanent Representative of Qatar to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) noted that the meeting discussed cooperation and coordination between meteorology departments, network of seismic stations and weather radars project in GCC countries so that it can track the weather in all these countries in terms of clouds' movement and weather's changes.      He stressed the need for coordination of positions with regard to the next election of the World Meteorological Congress that would be held in Geneva, saying that we are intending to set up mechanisms to implement coordination and efforts.     He said the national and international earthquake monitoring centre effectively began its experimental period, noting that monitoring operations have proven the initial quality of the extracted data. He said the centre be officially opened in next November, under the auspices of the chairman of Qatar Civil Aviation Authority Abdul Aziz Mohamed Al-Nuaimi. Qatar's working paper, presented at the meeting, touched on working out a mechanism to carry out the link between GCC countries, he added, saying a mechanism for bilateral link monitoring stations will start between Oman and Qatar to enable each party see the readings of the other party.(QNA)