[1] In the early 19th century, countries began to share meteorological data,[2][3] and on this basis a conference was held in Cambridge in 1845 with representation by the leading British and European meteorologists, including:[4][5][6] Matthew Fontaine Maury, of the US Navy, initiated the convening of the first true International Meteorological conference from late August through early September 1853.

[11] A second congress in Rome 1879 decided on the IMO establishment and elected an International Meteorological Committee to prepare for the next Conference of Directors.

Léon Teisserenc de Bort proposed a telegraph-based worldwide weather station network, the Réseau Mondial.

Simplifying Teisserenc de Bort's vision, the IMO decided that the network should collect, calculate, and distribute monthly and annual averages for pressure, temperature, and precipitation from a well-distributed sample of land based on meteorological stations, in effect a global climatological database.

At its 1934 Wiesbaden meeting the Commission designated the thirty-year period from 1901 to 1930 as the reference time frame for climatological standard normals.

In 1951 the World Meteorological Organization became a specialized agency of the United Nations in direct succession of the IMO.