## **_Box 1.1: Severe Weather Forecasting Demonstration Project_**

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has developed and implemented a series of Severe Weather Forecasting Demonstration Projects (SWFDPs) which are designed to demonstrate the usefulness of global numerical weather prediction (NWP) products, particularly ensemble prediction systems (EPS) - produced by global meteorological centers and regional specialized meteorological centers (RSMCs) - in improving severe weather forecasting services in countries where sophisticated model outputs are currently not used. These projects directly link improvements in NWP with improvements in forecasting skill at the national level and in services delivered to stakeholders through a cascading approach: global NWP outputs are delivered to RSMCs, who in turn disseminate regionally adapted outputs to the participating NMHSs. These then utilize the information to generate local forecasts and warnings. This technical approach is complemented by regular discussion and backstopping between forecasters at the national, regional and global levels.

Currently SWFDPs are running in Southern Africa, Eastern Africa and the South Pacific, with projects in various stages of development for Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Bay of Bengal. RSMC Pretoria, operated by the South African Weather Service, continues to support the first established SWFDP in Southern Africa. RSMC Pretoria has helped NMHSs improve their use of global modeling products to (a) predict severe weather events, such as heavy rain and strong winds, (b) improve alerts, (c) improve interaction between NMHSs and civil protection, and (d) improve the global data-processing and forecasting system and service delivery overall. _Sources: Rogers and Tsirkunov (2013), WMO (2016)._ The cascading forecast approach is not possible without global numerical weather products developed by global and regional forecast producing centers. The WMO coordinated Global Data-processing and Forecasting System (GDPFS) is organized as a three-level system of World Meteorological Centers (WMCs), Regional Specialized Meteorological Centers (RSMCs) and National Meteorological Centers (NMCs), which carry out GDPFS functions at the global, regional and national levels, respectively (WMO 2015a). The WMO membership has agreed formal requirements and definitions for designation of WMCs and RSMCs.

This current research is concerned primarily with global producing centers, some of which are not WMO-designated WMCs. As such we herein use the term “GPCs” to refer to all public organizations that operate global NWP models. It must be highlighted that while RSMCs play a critical role in the cascading system, they are not the subject of this research.

Currently, the system depends on the willingness, often through voluntary action, of a number of advanced GPCs to share their data and products. While the status quo is manageable, it provides limited guarantees in terms of sustainability, as most GPCs are not specifically tasked or financed to ensure product delivery to LICs.

# 1.3 Arguments to support LICs

This paper therefore explores the arguments and potential solutions for guaranteeing LIC NMHSs’ access to the full suite of forecasting products of GPCs. It should be noted that many middle-income countries (MICs) would also benefit from such GPC access, however as some MICs are able to 4