Polar Coupled Analysis and Prediction for Services (PCAPS)

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Context: Recently, the World Meteorological Organization launched the project Polar Coupled Analysis and Prediction for Services (PCAPS).

What is PCAPS?

• It is a new project of World Meteorological Organisation to increase and improve weather, water, ice, and climate information about the Arctic and Antarctic.
• PCAPS builds on previous initiatives like the Polar Prediction Project (PPP) and is part of the broader World Weather Research Programme (WWRP).

Objectives/Goals  of the project:

• The PCAPS project will undertake research that leads to improved service provision for vulnerable communities and those operating in the fast-changing polar regions.
• The research activities will focus on improving coupled weather and climate forecasting models.
• Building on the success of Polar Prediction Project, the project aims at improving Earth system models, and evolving climate in the Arctic and Antarctica regions ​by using novel observations and data assimilation.

Significance of the project:

• The polar regions are directly impacted by climate change, necessitating the provision of the best-possible user-informed, research-driven environmental forecast and reanalysis services to address the current, near-, and long-term risk picture.
• As the effects of climate change intensify, polar regions are experiencing rapid transformations, impacting their complex socio-ecological systems.
• With rapid environmental change in these regions, a pressing need for improving the actionability, impact, and fidelity, of weather forecasting in the polar regions is rooted in the unique challenges posed by these extreme environments.
• PCAPS, spanning 2024-2028 under the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP), is dedicated to enhancing environmental forecasting in the Arctic and Antarctic regions for human and environmental well-being.

Weather and Climate Forecasting 

• Weather and climate forecasting involves monitoring and predicting changes in weather and climate to provide early warnings of potential hazards.
• This can include providing alerts about extreme weather events. Often, in the polar regions, alerts will concern wind speed, cloud conditions, precipitation, visibility, and sea ice.
• The aim is to give communities time to prepare and adapt to these changes, in order to minimize damage to people, property, infrastructure, and ecosystems.
• PCAPS aims to facilitate the exchange of knowledge at the interface between science, users, and services.
• PCAPS will increase competence and improve operational model systems and observations for weather forecasting and monitoring in the Arctic.

World Weather Research Programme (WWRP)

• The WMO World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) promotes research to improve weather prediction, and its impacts on society, for minutes to months ahead.
• The improvements in science and operational predictions are driven by international cooperation, which then can drive sustainable development.

WWRP's key objectives are:

• Advance research of the Earth system on times scales from minutes to months.
• This research, through the science-for-services value cycle approach, in providing locally and regionally actionable weather information.
• Improve the warning process to account for increasing risks and the evolving nature of extreme weather impacts.
• Quantify and reduce uncertainty in predictions on time scales from minutes to months.

World Meteorological Organization

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is an intergovernmental organization with a membership of 192 Member States and Territories.

India is a member of WMO.

It originated from the International Meteorological Organization (IMO), which was established after the 1873 Vienna International Meteorological Congress.

Established by the ratification of the WMO Convention on 23rd March 1950.

 WMO became the specialized agency of the United Nations for meteorology (weather and climate), operational hydrology and related geophysical sciences.'

WMO is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

The World Meteorological Day is held annually on 23 March.

Important reports: Status of World Climate, Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.

Sources

https://community.wmo.int/en/projects-1

https://wmo.int/media/news/new-wmo-project-improve-weather-forecasts-arctic-and-antarctic

https://community.wmo.int/en/governance/commission-membership/research-board/research-programmes