25 Years of The World Weather Research Programme
The World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) is the World Meteorological Organization’s international programme for advancing and promoting research activities on weather, its prediction, and its impact on society on time scales of minutes to months. As WWRP enters its 25th year, it has experienced tremendous progress over the past decades in advancing its capabilities in weather predictions, community building, research capacity building and stakeholder engagement. Looking back, the WWRP celebrates its achievements in successfully serving as an umbrella beneath which many international and national research weather prediction activities and projects succeeded.
New sources of atmospheric observations, faster supercomputers and advances in weather science together have revolutionized weather forecasting. One significant contributor to this success was “The Observing system Research and Prediction Experiment (THORPEX)”, a 10-year programme that ended in 2014, aimed at improving weather forecasting skills.
The risks of climate change and natural disasters today have only amplified the importance of WWRP’s work. Today, people across our planet face unprecedented extremes in the form of heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and their attribution to human influence. There is every reason to believe these events will continue to accelerate, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations.
WWRP recognizes the urgent need to move our science into the hands of those who need it to reduce their risk, individually and collectively. To achieve this, WWRP aims at seamless earth system observations and predictions, through increased convergence between weather, climate, and environmental approaches. These include topics such as polar research, sub-seasonal to seasonal predictions for agriculture, water and energy, flooding, aviation, tropical cyclones, impact-based forecasting, and interdisciplinary science to benefit urban communities. WWRP works closely with our early-career scientists to ensure that the next generation of leading scientists is given all the tools and experience they need to continue this vital work.