South Asia: Collaborating for Climate Resilience through Hydromet and Early Warning Systems

Key Highlights

• World Bank support has helped convene the South Asia Hydromet Forum (SAHF) to coordinate and improve forecasting, strengthen capacity, and pool expertise among meteorological and hydrological experts.
• SAHF has trained over 117 hydromet professionals in South Asia, 39 of whom are women, and it has engaged 640 experts via four international conferences.
• Since February 2022, forecasters across the region meet virtually every week to discuss weather and marine conditions and possible hazardous weather events. This has helped build consensus forecasting and issue more accurate early warnings that ultimately save lives.

Challenge

South Asia is one of the most vulnerable regions to weather- and climate-related shocks, with nearly 750 million people impacted by one or more climate-related disasters in the past two decades. Climate disasters do not stop at national borders, and the region is living through a new climate normal, characterized by more frequent and intense heat waves, cyclones, droughts, floods, and other extreme events, which challenges the capacity of governments, businesses, and citizens to adapt. These extreme events are directly affecting people, with over 283,685 recorded deaths from 1970 to 2022. Extreme events also impact productivity and performance of key economic sectors such as agriculture, water, fisheries, hydropower, urban development, and tourism, with $245 billion in damages for the same period.

Resilience to weather and climate events fundamentally rely on forecasts: short-term, to inform emergency preparedness and evacuations; medium-term, to reduce losses and increase productivity in climate-sensitive sectors; and long-term, to inform climate-resilient planning. For example, farmers can use specific agrometeorological advisories to make critical planting and harvesting decisions affecting yields and income in the face of an approaching cyclone, or they can change the choice of crop to plant if they know that an upcoming season will be particularly dry or wet.

Unfortunately, many National Meteorological and Hydrological services (NMHSs), face severe limitations in funding, skills, and human resources to respond to the increasing service needs of users and struggle to keep up with the rapidly advancing data science and complexity of hydrometeorological technologies and methods.

Approach

Given the transboundary nature of climate and weather hazards, and diverse levels of capacity and expertise across the countries of South Asia, regional collaboration offers synergies and economies of scale that are not only beneficial, but essential to meet the rising threat of climate impacts. The South Asia Hydromet Forum (SAHF), established in 2018 with support from the World Bank and the World Meteorological Organization, brings together NMHSs professionals from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. SAHF provides a platform to develop capacity for improved hydromet and early warning services to enhance resilience to climate and disaster risks. SAHF is built along three pillars—building capacity, exchanging knowledge, and strengthening regional engagement—to bolster more accurate and reliable hydromet services.

Since its establishment, SAHF has developed a strong institutional framework. The SAHF Executive Council (EC), established in April 2021, includes the hydromet agencies of eight South Asian countries and Myanmar (which shares similar weather and climate with many of its South Asian neighbors). The EC provides strategic direction for the Forum. The Regional Integrated Multi-hazard Early Warning System (RIMES) serves as secretariat to coordinate the implementation of activities as well as host the Knowledge Hub—an information exchange platform launched in November 2022 to facilitate access to and exchange of weather and climate information. It also organizes the Forecasters Forum—a weekly platform initiated in February 2022 that enables forecasters from the region to discuss weather and marine forecasts, and possible hazardous weather events. Beyond formal sessions, the forecasters maintain a WhatsApp group for unscheduled exchanges of information.

In addition, five technical working groups—with representation from all member countries—were established in 2019 on priority topics including (i) observation networks, (ii) numerical weather prediction, (iii) impact-based forecasting, (iv) capacity enhancement and (v) hydrology. The working groups discuss national and regional priorities in each dedicated area and propose interventions to support improved forecasting. Finally, a technical advisory group constituted of highly experienced hydromet experts provides technical and strategic support to SAHF.

Results

Through the regional SAHF platform, the World Bank has supported and boosted transboundary weather and climate cooperation, knowledge exchange, and capacity building in South Asia, one of the least integrated regions in the world.

The Knowledge Hub portal provides a one-stop platform for access to observational data across the region, forecast data visualization, high-resolution and high-frequency forecast products, such as forecasting models from leading global weather data centers. This supports increased forecast accuracy of weather and climate hazards and serves as a virtual library and repository for SAHF documents.

The Forecasters Forum provides a continuous platform for participating hydromet professionals to discuss new models and data, share expertise, and support consensus forecasting, which enhances quality, accuracy, and utility through a regional perspective and pooling of competences across countries. An initial survey found that over 90 percent of the Forum members considered the sessions useful, especially for discussing upcoming extreme weather events. This information sharing is especially useful for marine forecasting, where some countries have more expertise. For example, meteorologists in India and Maldives have helped counterparts in Sri Lanka improve forecasts and advance warnings about extreme wave heights to the country’s fishing community. In 2023, forecasters in India and Bangladesh shared their Bay of Bengal cyclone expertise with forecasters in Myanmar during Cyclone Mocha, enabling Myanmar to issue more accurate warnings and ultimately, save lives. Similarly, information on Indian Ocean swell waves that reached Maldives first, helped Sri Lanka prepare better against inundation along its shores.

SAHF is also building capacity with in-person and virtual training sessions attended by over 117 hydrologists and meteorologists from South Asia, 39 of whom were women. Eighty percent of the attendees found the content extremely applicable to their daily work.

SAHF conferences are strengthening in-person strategic and technical dialogue. To date, four conferences have engaged over 640 hydromet experts, service users, development partners, global and regional organizations, and academics. These conferences have been major milestones for regional collaboration, with countries committing to collaboration through the SAHF platform, and continuing to refine the SAHF model.

Bank Group Contribution

The World Bank has supported SAHF activities through several trust funds financed by the United Kingdom (UK) Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (administered by the Resilient Asia Program and Program for Asia Resilience to Climate Change) and the European Union (administered by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery). These trust funds provided a total of around $1,750,000 from December 2018 to June 2024

Partners

Key partners providing technical and financial support to SAHF include: the India Meteorological Department (chair of SAHF); Bhutan’s National Center for Hydrology and Meteorology (co-chair of SAHF); the National Meteorological Services of Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan; Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System for Africa and Asia (RIMES), which holds a secretary role for SAHF; the World Meteorological Organization, the UK Met Office, the European Union, the FCDO, and the GFDRR.

The team has been collaborating particularly closely with the World Meteorological Organization which was a key partner during the establishment of SAHF, and the UK’s Met Office, which brings its expertise on impact-based forecasting (IBF) and climate services through IBF training and capacity building seminars to SAHF.

Looking Ahead

In November 2023, the SAHF Executive Council agreed upon ambitious goals, which were endorsed at the SAHF IV conference in February 2024.

One key priority is the expansion of operational collaboration, including strengthening of numerical weather prediction across all countries in the region; establishment of a prototype regional precipitation grid to improve rainfall data; and enhancing early warning systems to save lives and livelihoods across South Asia. SAHF also aims to help NMHSs develop into Centers of Expertise for specific technical areas, such as mountain meteorology in order to strengthening local forecasting in complex terrain and fast weather changes, contributing to enhanced aviation safety and better mountaineering information.

Another priority is tailoring services to user needs through co-production of action-oriented hydromet solutions, including enhancements in quality and customization of services through strengthened impact-based forecasting and decision support systems for agriculture, and urban services for city resilience in response to extreme heat and flooding. Outreach messaging to users (e.g., farmers) will emphasize “what the weather will do,” enabling users to better understand potential impacts, probabilities, and actions that should be taken.

Finally, SAHF will support exploration of mechanisms to enhance quality and sustainability of hydromet service provision, including through analysis of sustainable business models for NMHSs, such as opportunities to provide commercial services and engage with the private sector to enhance efficiency and quality of service provision.