Image: (From right) Associate Prof Wen Bihan, Asst Prof Wang Jingyu, Assoc Prof Lee Yee Hui, Prof Simon Redfern, Dean of College of Science, Vice President (Innovation and Entrepreneurship) Prof Louis Phee, and Prof Adam Switzer, Director, CIFAL.
The Climate and Weather Research Alliance Singapore (CAWRAS) was launched today as a national platform to advance tropical climate and weather research in Singapore and Southeast Asia, and to nurture a local talent pipeline in weather and climate science. It is jointly established by the National Environment Agency (NEA), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), NTU Singapore, and the National University of Singapore (NUS).
As its first initiative, CAWRAS will implement the $25 million Weather Science Research Programme (WSRP), funded under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 Plan. Led by the Centre for Climate Research Singapore (CCRS), the programme brings together leading research institutions to expand national weather science capabilities. This effort comes as advances in high-resolution modelling, artificial intelligence (AI), and observational networks create new opportunities to improve weather prediction. In future, the alliance will expand its scope to climate research on longer timescales.
Ten research projects have been awarded under the WSRP, focusing on four areas: improving the use of weather observations, developing next-generation weather and climate models, conducting historical weather re-analysis for Southeast Asia, and enhancing prediction accuracy through advanced post-processing techniques.
Professor Ernst Kuipers, Vice President (Research) of NTU Singapore, said: “Leveraging NTU’s track record in Earth and environmental sciences, supported by infrastructure like the Earth Observatory of Singapore and our Climate Transformation Programme, we are uniquely positioned to combine AI, remote sensing, and advanced environmental modelling to forecast tropical weather with greater accuracy. Through interdisciplinary collaboration in fields such as medicine, public health, environmental engineering, and urban resilience, NTU will contribute to Singapore’s role as a hub for tropical weather and climate science research in Southeast Asia.”
