<h1>Singapore's Weather Science Research Programme</h1> <p>Singapore's Weather Science Research Programme (WSRP) is a S$25 million national research programme launched in March 2025 to improve understanding and prediction of tropical urban weather, including extreme events associated with climate change (<a href="https://www.nea.gov.sg/media/news/news/index/25-million-weather-science-research-programme-launched-to-enhance-singapore-s-weather-prediction-capabilities">National Environment Agency, 4 March 2025</a>). It is funded under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 Plan and is intended to build national weather-science capability through collaboration between the Meteorological Service Singapore, local Institutes of Higher Learning, and research institutes. The programme is about research and forecasting capability, not a household weather-insurance scheme or a guarantee that every forecast will be accurate.</p> <h2>What WSRP studies</h2> <p>The programme has four broad research areas. <strong>Observations</strong> improves the use of satellite, radar, and other data through advanced data-assimilation methods. <strong>Next-generation models</strong> develops high-resolution weather and climate models tailored to tropical regions. <strong>Regional reanalysis</strong> reconstructs roughly 50 years of high-resolution historical weather across Southeast Asia, creating a dataset for studying past extremes and training AI/ML systems. <strong>Post-processing</strong> develops methods to extract more useful, uncertainty-aware information from model forecasts (<a href="https://www.nea.gov.sg/programmes-grants/grants-and-awards/research-innovation-and-enterprise-funding-initiatives/weather-science-research-programme">National Environment Agency, accessed 19 August 2026</a>). AI and machine learning are cross-cutting methods across these areas rather than a separate fifth programme.</p> <h2>CAWRAS and the awarded projects</h2> <p>The Climate and Weather Research Alliance Singapore (CAWRAS) was established in September 2025 by NEA, A<em>STAR, NTU Singapore, and NUS as a national research platform to implement WSRP and nurture a local talent pipeline (<a href="https://www.nea.gov.sg/media/news/news/index/singapore-launches-research-alliance-to-strengthen-weather-and-climate-science-capabilities">National Environment Agency, 5 September 2025</a>). NEA's programme page lists ten awarded projects hosted across NUS, NTU, and A</em>STAR. They include radar-data assimilation, tropical weather prediction, urban-weather processes, atmospheric interactions across the Maritime Continent, AI foundation models for regional weather prediction, convective-hazard prediction, and blending forecasts from multiple models (<a href="https://www.nea.gov.sg/programmes-grants/grants-and-awards/research-innovation-and-enterprise-funding-initiatives/weather-science-research-programme">National Environment Agency, accessed 19 August 2026</a>). The list describes awarded research projects, not ten operational forecasting products already deployed to the public.</p> <h2>Relationship to other climate programmes</h2> <p>WSRP addresses short- to medium-term weather prediction and extreme-weather understanding. It is distinct from the National Sea Level Programme, which was completed in 2025 and focused on sea-level rise and variability, and from coastal-protection programmes that design and build physical defences. WSRP research can support resilience planning by improving information about heavy rain, strong winds, thunderstorms, and other tropical hazards, but a research result does not itself change a flood rule, create a seawall, or guarantee a particular warning for a specific location. Forecasts and public advisories remain operational products of the relevant meteorological authorities and should be checked for the date and location concerned.</p>