WMO Hydrological Observing System (WHOS)

The WMO Hydrological Observing System (WHOS) facilitates interoperable hydrological data sharing. It is a multi-scale (local, national, regional and global) solution using different tools which also provides registry of hydrological data and information services, catalogued using the open standards and procedures developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), the WMO, W3C, GeoJson, and other relevant organizations.

WHOS is being developed and implemented in two phases:

Phase 1 provides a map interface with links to those NMHSs that make their real-time and historical hydrological data available online.

Phase 2 provides a services-oriented framework linking hydrological data providers and users through a hydrological information system of systems enabling data registration, data discovery and data access.

Find out more on the WHOS Community site.

Regional and national WHOS prototypes located in the La Plata Basin in South America (WHOS-Plata) and in the Arctic Region (WHOS-Arctic) have now reached their final stage of implementation.

To easily leverage common WHOS functionalities such as data discovery and data access on the web by means of common web browsers, WHOS web portals are available online:

WHOS-Arctic Portal

WHOS-Arctic Portal provides hydrometeorological data shared by Canada, Finland, Denmark (for Greenland), Iceland, Norway, Russia and the United States of America for the Arctic-HYCOS Basic Network of Hydrological Stations (BNHS). WHOS-Arctic Portal is implemented using ArcGIS Online for the map interface and USGS GWIS (Graphing Water Information System) for the time-series plots.

Access WHOS-Arctic Portal

WHOS-Plata Portal

WHOS-Plata Portal provides hydrometeorological data collected in the La Plata river basin and shared by Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. WHOS-Plata Portal is implemented using the Water Data Explorer application.

Access WHOS-Plata Portal

WHOS-Global Portal

WHOS-Global Portal provides all hydrometeorological data shared through WHOS. WHOS-Global Portal is implemented using the Water Data Explorer application.

Access WHOS-Global Portal