The World Meteorological Organization has conferred the award to highlight and recognise the role in climatological analyses of the Italian Air Force station. An international delegation from the WMO was also present at the event, including Dr Andrea Merlone of INRiM (National Institute of Metrological Research), who is also the contact person for the WMO “Commission for Centennial and Reference Stations”. During his speech, Dr Merlone emphasised how the WMO is working to define univocal criteria so that data collected by meteorological stations can be fully used for the purposes intended by climatology, which unfortunately is not always possible. He highlighted the need to help the climatologists of the future by starting to measure the atmosphere today in a more complete and documented way. Having centennial historical series is an important result of perseverance and dedication, but further elements of knowledge must be added so that the next 100 years of data are even more useful to the scientific community. In this context, the Vigna di Valle station, with its open-air experimental measurement field and its calibration and testing laboratory, is in the best position to be selected as a “WMO Reference Climatological Station” (WMO-RCS).
