Celeste Saulo~, a well-known meteorologist from Argentina, has recently been appointed to the position of Director of the United Nations’ Service for Meteorological Prediction. She has already received the necessary two-thirds backing from member nations, so she will officially take over as secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva at the end of this year.
Petteri Taalas has served as the director general of the WMO since 2016, but Saulo will succeed him as the organization’s next director general. The relevance of the World Meteorological Organization’s role in coordinating international meteorological activity has expanded as a result of the ramifications of climate change on weather patterns, natural disasters, the safety of food supplies, and the health of humans.
In his capacity as director of the SMN, Saulo has made the modernization of the network along three axes a top priority: the improvement of monitoring, the improvement of prediction quality, and the improvement of public outreach. In addition to this, she has advocated for increased collaboration amongst a variety of organizations and sectors with the goal of assisting Argentina in meeting its obligations to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. Since she has been in charge of the SMN, it has been the venue for a great number of capacity development initiatives centered on training for the meteorological and hydrological services of less developed nations.
In addition to that, she has been involved in a number of program that have been carried out in her region as well as in other parts of the world with the goal of encouraging younger generations to pursue careers in the scientific community. This is demonstrated by the fact that the Young Earth System Scientists (YESS) Office is located within the WMO SMN.
The election of Saulo as consul general has been regarded as a seminal event for the progression of women into positions of power in the disciplines of science and diplomacy. This sentiment is shared by a large number of people. She is the first woman to head the World Meteorological Organization and one of just a few women who have ever commanded specialized UN entities. She was also the first woman to lead the UN. The American Meteorological Society (AMS), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), and the International Council for Science (ICSU-ROA) are just some of the scientific societies that have lauded Saulo’s work.
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