History
The DWD was founded in 1952 by joining the weather services of the western occupation zones. In 1954 the Federal Republic of Germany joined the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). In 1975 the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) was founded for numerical weather prediction up to ten days in advance. In 1990 the DWD integrated the weather services of the German Democratic Republic after reunification.
Since the 1990s, the DWD continuously decreased the number of manned weather stations, which resulted in substantial staff cutbacks. According to the DWD, no reduction in forecast quality is to be expected, since techniques like weather radar or satellites have significantly improved weather data overall.
Read more about this topic: Deutscher Wetterdienst
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The principle office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–117)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)