Urdaibai Bird Center will celebrate the World Meteorological Day 2014 next Sunday

World Meteorological Day is celebrated every year on 23 March to commemorate the entry into force in 1950 of the convention that created the World Meteorological Organization. The day also highlights the huge contribution that National Meteorological and Hydrological Services make to the safety and well-being of society.

This year's World Meteorological Day theme is “Weather and climate: engaging youth." Today’s youth will benefit from the dramatic advances being made in our ability to understand and forecast the Earth’s weather and climate. At the same time, most of them will live into the second half of this century and experience the increasing impacts of global warming. WMO encourages young people to learn more about our weather and climate system and to contribute to action on climate change.

A Northern Gannet running away of a squall in the Cantabrian Sea

A mixed flock of Northern Lapwing and European Golden Plover on the snow

Eurasian Coot under a summer downpour

In this context, we want to make a sign to this interesting science, offering next Sunday 23rd of March at 10:30 am, a free guided visit (in Spanish) for a maximum of 20 people. The visit will last one hour and a half and it is necessary to arrange it before. For more information you can call to the Urdaibai Bird Center - tlf: 0034 699 839 202.

The visitors, apart from a bird watching session, could learn several aspects related to the influence that meteorological factors have on the life of birds, and will have the opportunity to see close up the launch of the weather balloon in the only automatic radio sounding station  installed  in Euskadi by Euskalmet in 2012 inside the Urdaibai Bird Center.

Launching a meteorological balloon

This system launches automatically radio soundings to the atmosphere that provides data of temperature, relative humidity, pressure and wind from 30 meters high to 25 kilometers high very frequently. That is, it gives us information about the meteorological characteristics of each air layer in the troposphere and in part of the stratosphere.

A weather balloon rising

These data are very important to know and to explain different meteorological phenomenon (storms, stormy northwest winds, snows, rough weather, heat waves...), and also to improve weather forecasting and to prevent disasters.