Providing Timely and Reliable Weather and Climate Services
Situated one degree north of the equator, Singapore’s tropical climate presents its own unique set of environmental challenges. To prepare for the effects of climate change, NEA’s Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS) provides reliable and responsive weather and climate services, towards greater public safety and a climate resilient economy.
Improving Weather Forecasting Capabilities
Climate change and extreme weather changes have resulted in a growing demand for weather and climate prediction information services. To provide improved weather forecasts and alerts for Singapore, MSS will undertake several new initiatives with the latest weather forecasting capabilities and services, underscored by advances in infrastructure, R&D and operations.
These include the development of a MET-Air Traffic Management Integration system to provide actionable high-resolution information for air traffic management. This will improve the efficiency and safety of civil air navigation, and reinforce Singapore’s position as a global air hub. In addition, MSS plans to enhance emergency-preparedness at the WOG level, by improving risk assessments for extreme weather events and geohazards such as volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. Beyond this, our strategic initiatives aim to enhance climate predictions to support efforts in areas such as water management, food security and disaster management. These initiatives will enable us to meet increasingly sophisticated requirements for weather-related operations and long-term climate impact assessments.
Going Forward |
NEA’s short-term and medium-term focus is to strengthen our climate science capabilities, enhance weather forecasting and hazard prediction capabilities, and provide fit-for-purpose weather services. Key initiatives include conducting the Third National Climate Change Study, which will provide the next generation of localised and high-resolution climate change projections until 2100 for Singapore, driving research under the Climate Science Research Programme Office, and enhancing our Meteorological Observation Systems. Our goal is to observe and understand the weather and climate affecting Singapore, and to provide services to support national needs and international cooperation. |
Using High-performance Computing in Weather and Climate Science
To improve the accuracy of our weather and climate prediction capabilities for Singapore and the wider Southeast Asia region, the Centre of Climate Research Singapore is undertaking R&D in numerical climate and weather modelling, as well as machine-learning-based post processing techniques. Priority areas include the development of a 'cSINGV' coupled climate model configuration that can simulate the atmosphere, ocean and land components concurrently, and a higher spatial resolution 'uSINGV' urban climate model configuration representative of Singapore’s built-up environment, to provide better realism in capturing small-scale weather and climate processes beyond the current km-scale resolution 'SINGV' MSS climate model.
These scientific developments require significant technological enhancements in our in-house High-performance Computing (HPC) resources, which will be upgraded in 2022 with a new 'HPE Cray EX' supercomputer – with double the computational power of our current system. In addition, we will continue to require significant computational resources from the National Supercomputing Centre’s HPC facilities for underpinning weather and climate research, and novel cloud computing infrastructures for climate data analytics.
Strengthening Partnerships in Weather and Climate Services
As international cooperation is essential to address weather and climate challenges, MSS works to strengthen partnerships with regional and international counterparts, to enhance our capabilities in the provision of meteorological and climate services.
On the regional front, MSS currently serves as the Chair of the ASEAN Sub-Committee on Meteorology and Geophysics (SCMG). This is a three-year term from 2021 to 2023, where we successfully organised the SCMG’s 42nd Meeting in November 2021.
As SCMG Chair, we continue to steer the implementation of the 2016 to 2025 Work Plan, to fulfil its objective of enhancing the capabilities of ASEAN Member States in the provision of meteorology and geophysics services.
This includes joint key initiatives spearheaded by Singapore and the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC), such as capability-building activities on numerical weather prediction, subseasonal to seasonal predictions, and regional climate change projections. The ASMC, hosted by MSS, has been instrumental in regional capability-building, weather and climate assessments in the region, regional monitoring of land and forest fires, and providing early warnings of transboundary haze.