Uptil 2023, the WWRP coordinated three core projects, which have been developed by relevant science communities, the Subseasonal to Seasonal Prediction Project (S2S), Polar Prediction Project (PPP) and High Impact Weather Project (HIWeather). Within these, the Polar Prediction Project (PPP) and Subseasonal to Seasonal Prediction Project (S2S) ended in 2022 and 2023 respectively. The High Impact Weather Project (HIWeather) end in 2024. 

Polar Prediction Project

The regions of the Arctic and Antarctic are attracting growing interest due to concerns about the amplification of anthropogenic climate change. Increasing economic activities and transportation in polar regions, among others, are driving demand for sustained and improved availability of integrated observational and predictive weather, water, climate and ice information in support of decision-making processes. However, many gaps in weather, sub-seasonal and seasonal forecasting in both regions still exist.

The goal of the WWRP Polar Prediction Project (PPP) is to promote cooperative international research to enable the development of improved weather and environmental prediction services for polar regions (including the Third Pole High Mountain region) on time scales from hours to seasonal. This project constitutes the hours-to-seasonal research component of the emerging WMO Global Integrated Polar Prediction System (GIPPS). A closely related WCRP Polar Climate Predictability Initiative covers GIPPS research on seasonal-to-decadal time scales.

The direct donors for PPP are Met Office (UK), Environment and Climate Change Canada (Canada), Norwegian Meteorological Institute (Norway), Deutscher Wetterdienst (Germany) and the Bureau Of Meteorology (Australia).

For more information and updates please visit the official PPP website.

Subseasonal-to-seasonal

Prediction Project

The Subseasonal-to-Seasonal Prediction Project (S2S) started in 2013 as a collaborative structure set up by WCRP, WWRP and THORPEX for an initial 5 years until 2018 and the second phase for 2019 to 2023 was approved in 2018 by the WMO Executive Council. The goals of this project are:

• To improve forecast skill and understanding on the sub-seasonal to seasonal timescale with special emphasis on high-impact weather events;

• To promote the uptake of results by operational centres and exploitation by the applications community and

• To capitalize on the expertise of the weather and climate research communities to address issues of importance to the Global Framework for Climate Services.

Research Priorities:

• Evaluate potential predictability of sub-seasonal events, including identifying windows of opportunity for increased forecast skill;

• Understand systematic errors and biases in the sub-seasonal to seasonal forecast range;

• Compare, verify and test multi-model combinations from these forecasts and quantify their uncertainty; and

• Focus on some specific extreme event case studies

The direct donors for PPP are Met Office (UK), Environment and Climate Change Canada (Canada), Deutscher Wetterdienst (Germany) and the Bureau Of Meteorology (Australia).

For more information and updates please visit the official S2S website.

High Impact Weather Project

(through 2024)

The High Impact Weather Project (HIWeather) is a ten-year activity within the World Weather Research Programme and aims to promote cooperative international research to achieve a dramatic increase in resilience to high-impact weather, worldwide, through improving forecasts for timescales of minutes to two weeks and enhancing their communication and utility in social, economic and environmental applications.

For more information and updates please visit the official HiWeather website and view the video.