Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all, let me take this opportunity to welcome you in Hungary, and more importantly, to this significant Seminar.

I am very pleased to accepted the invitation to this Seminar, beacuse the topic it is dedicated to bears great importance. In Hungary, the Ministry of Environment is responsible for the protection and resource planning of the environment. Within these tasks, atmospheric phenomena and processes of different scales play important and role.

One of the most complex and comprehensive problems of our days, which affects each country in one way or an other, is climate change. This most influential issue is incorporated in the field of meteorology, or more precisely, in climatology. Meteorology is linked to several aspects of everyday life, and many practical applications of this science and its measurements have large and dinamically increasing economic importance. The more globalized the economy is, the more consequential decisions are being based on meteorological measurements and data. Therefore, appropriate data for ecnomic planning are being needed, which data are expected to fulfill certain precision requirements.

Unfortunately, it is a general problem and not only in Hungary but in the majority of the countries, that users and researchers are glad to even have data and are not concerned about their source and precision. Numerous quality control methods exist to be applied for measurements and control and they might lead to sigfnificantly different results. Thus, the aim to be accomplished is twofold: firstly the measuring conditions should be defined more precisely, and secondly observed data must go through a thorough quality control and correction procedure.

Globalization also implies unification and comparability of methods and products. This is more emphatic to products which are used as bases to generate further results. A method is expected to provide us with the same precision when applied data from Europe, Africa or from any other continent.

Large and significant international initiatives like IPCC, UNCCC or UNCCD require more and higher quailty data and deeper climatological knowledge for their successful work and further development. The climatologist community can only deliver quality products, if they attempt to keep syncronize their conclusions with practical experience. This is only possibly through detailed and thorough investigaton of the observation and data processing.

Every country intends to optimize the use of their resources according their present and future interests. This can only be accomplished by solving the problems which you, dear participants, aim at: producing long and reliable data series to be used for constructing global data sets, climate change studies and comparisons. If you succeed in these ambitions, not only will the outcome of your work be highly beneficial for your colleagues, but also for several other researchers and users in several fields.

Therefore, I would like to wish you luck and success in your work and for this Seminar. I am looking forward to the results, suggestions and conclusions of your work.

Thank you for your attention.