Potential Areas of US Involvement in the WMO HIWeather Project in Response to the Sendai Framework Objective in Early Warning Systems

Early Warning Systems are a key objective of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Reduction. The WMO High Impact Weather project, HIWeather, aims to address this objective through building capacity and capability in weather-related warning systems. The project plan has identified key gaps in our knowledge of what causes weather-related disasters, how we predict them, the information we provide to emergency managers and the products, media and formats through which we communicate information. The US has existing activity related to several of these gaps that would benefit from integration, both across disciplines and with other countries' initiatives. A focus of the HIWeather project will be on building demonstration opportunities related to capacity development in less developed weather services. US experience will be vital in gaining the optimum outcomes from such activities. My talk will introduce the project and summarise the research gaps that it will focus on and how they relate to work in the US and in other countries. I will then move on to describe the current thinking about how to build capacity through demonstration projects and how the US might be involved.