WISER Asia Pacific

WISER Asia Pacific is funded under UK International Development by the UK government's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office's (FCDO) Climate Action for a Resilient Asia (CARA) programme. The CARA programme is a nine-year programme aiming to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable communities, economies and the environment against the impacts of climate change and promote low carbon growth across the Indo-Pacific.  

The WISER Asia Pacific programme will run until February 2031 and geographically provide support to South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific islands in developing and delivering transformational change in the quality, accessibility and use of weather and climate information services.  It will do this by supporting regional priorities which will contribute to improving resilience and response preparedness to extreme weather, seasonal variability, and climate change.  

Building on  work undertaken through WISER Africa, WISER Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and the Asia Regional Resilience to a Changing Climate (ARRCC) Programme , WISER Asia Pacific will take a regional approach. Its focus will be on the co-production and development of new and improved impact-based weather and risk-based climate services, actively working to ensure Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) is central to programme design, and promote partnerships that allow the improved and sustainable production, access, uptake and use of weather and climate information. A cross-regional scoping assessment was undertaken in 2022-2023, where gaps, barriers, needs and opportunities for WISER support were highlighted, and key themes the programme intends to focus on were identified. 

From 2024, the programme moved into a delivery and implementation phase whilst further engaging with regional stakeholders and building partnerships in sub-regions to refine and develop specific priorities and interventions for the programme. It also continues to link with other CARA partners, where already several opportunities for alignment have been identified. 

WISER Asia Pacific projects

South Asia 

Supporting the South Asia Hydro Met Forum (SAHF)  

Working in partnership to support priorities for Impact-based forecasting and Climate Services. 

The South Asia Hydromet Forum (SAHF), established in 2018, with support from World Bank, World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), UK government and the Met Office in the UK is a principal regional mechanism to support engagement and enhance capacity at the regional and sub-regional levels for hydrometeorological, early warning and climate services in South Asia.  

SAHF is governed by the SAHF Executive Council composed of the heads of the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) of nine South Asian countries with technical secretariat provided by Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (RIMES). SAHF has established a number of working groups across priority ‘themes’ including: Impact Based Forecasting (IBF), Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP), Observation Networks (OBN), Capacity Building and Hydrology.  

From 2025-30, WISER Asia Pacific will support: 

1. Priorities of the IBF working group, an existing priority of SAHF aiming to build regional-national collaboration, capacity building and piloting of IBF approaches 

2. Development of a new working group and roadmap for Climate Services in the South Asia region. 

To inform priorities, WISER Asia Pacific in collaboration with RIMES held a SAHF planning workshop the outcomes of which will inform planning and design of the above priorities. 

Collaborative support has also been provided by the World Bank through the FCDO-funded Resilient Asia Program, including: 

1. Further institutional strengthening of SAHF as regional collaboration mechanism 

2. Strategic planning of the OBN and NWP working groups, and implementation of priorities 

3. Strengthening of the sustainability and business models of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services, including the exploration of public-private engagement. 

Strengthening and Scaling Wheat Disease Early Warning Systems in South Asia 

Working in partnership with International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in strengthening Wheat Disease Early Warning Systems in South Asia. 

Building on previous Met Office projects with the University of Cambridge, under ARRCC and linked to the Wheat Disease Early Warning Advisory System (DEWAS) project, this project aims to mitigate the threats to food security posed by transboundary fungal diseases through expansion, enhancement, scaling and further strengthening of disease early warning systems in Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal.   

Between February and August 2024, the project enabled weekly wheat disease advisories to be set up in target countries which were translated into local languages and disseminated via focal points to agricultural extension workers and farmers. The project reached over 600,000 farmers across Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan, including women, marginalised groups and young farmers, enabling farmers to take action to reduce the risk of wheat disease. As a result, farmers have been able to access and use this information to mitigate against harmful pathogens during growing season. Due to this clear impact and benefit to many across the region, the project was awarded additional funding to continue a second phase running through to August 2025 to further strengthen and scale wheat disease early warning systems in South Asia. 

Pacific Islands 

Supporting the Pacific led Weather Ready Pacific Programme 

Working in partnership with Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) to support Weather Ready Pacific to increase Pacific resilience to extreme weather events and contribute to objectives under Early Warnings for ALL (EW4All). 

Weather Ready Pacific is a decadal programme of investment that seeks to reduce human and economic costs of severe weather, water and ocean events across Pacific Island communities. It aims to do this by strengthening the capacity of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) and their partnerships with National Disaster Management organisations. 

WISER Asia Pacific is contributing to Weather Ready Pacific by supporting inception phase activities under KRA 3: Communication and Delivery of Forecasts and Warnings to End-users with a strong focus on Gender Equality, Disability and Social Inclusion (GEDSI) mainstreaming to ensure vulnerable and marginalised groups have improved access and use of weather and climate Information services. 

Supporting the revision of the Pacific Climate Change Science and Services Research (PCCSSR) Roadmap 

Work under this small grant by the Pacific Climate Change Centre (PCCC) supports the revision of the PCCSSR Roadmap, which aims to develop and support the strategic approach in coordinating and delivering important climate change science and services research in the Pacific.  

Southeast Asia 

Co-development of regional climate projections and services in Southeast Asia 

Working in partnership with The Viet Nam Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Climate Change (IMHEN) to extend the production and application of climate projections for Southeast Asia, leading to more informed adaptation planning and resilience building. 

This project developed new high-resolution climate projections for Southeast Asia by downscaling the latest global climate models from the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) in line with international standards defined by the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) . Outputs will be publicly accessible via a regional platform ensuring data is available to the wider Southeast Asia community.  

The project has secured partnerships with critical stakeholders to understand their needs in translating climate projection data into services with a particular focus on working with IMHEN to support updates to their national climate change scenarios. As such, the Met Office in the UK under WISER Asia Pacific hosted a six-week secondment, with two leading IMHEN scientists to support Viet Nnam’s national climate change and sea-level rise scenarios. 

Cross regional 

Supporting the Severe Weather Forecasting Programme (SWFP), WMO-led initiative 

Supporting SWFP’s aim to “strengthen the capacity of WMO Members to deliver improved forecasts and warnings of severe weather in order to save lives and livelihoods and protect property and infrastructure.” 

This project supports the technical capabilities of National Metrological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) to deliver improved forecasts, warn for hazardous weather and bring users together with producers through impact-based forecasting.  

Under the project, a survey was carried out for SWFP Southeast Asia, South Asia and South Pacific regions to understand the use and usefulness of the products and services provided by designated regional centres to the NMHSs in their regions. In February 2025, SWFP has expanded to include the Southeastern Asia-Oceania subregion where WISER Asia Pacific has supported the Technical Planning Meeting for SWFP implementation for the sub-region. 

Supporting Regional Climate Outlook Forums in South Asia and Southeast Asia 

Working in partnership with Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (RIMES). on strengthening relationships and sustainability of Regional Climate Outlook Forum (RCOF) activities in South Asia and Southeast Asia. 

“Regional Climate Outlook Forums (RCOF) are a collaborative multi-national and institutional platform that produces a consensus-based, user-relevant seasonal climate outlook products for the upcoming season to support climate-related risk management.” In 2024, WISER Asia Pacific supported the running of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Climate Outlook Forum (ASEANCOF) and South Asia Climate Outlook Forum (SASCOF) and provided technical assistance to develop the capacity of key producers of weather and climate information services within these regions.  

Building on this, this project will continue to support the Climate Outlook Forums in these regions. It also aims to further enhance the utility of seasonal guidance to inform resilient decision-making by users at the national and regional level by strengthening capability to produce, interpret, and apply seasonal climate information across the user-provider spectrum.