Introduction

KMA / NWP International Cooperation

Since the Republic of Korea joined the World Meteorological Organization(WMO) in 1956, the Korea Meteorological Administration(KMA) has been expanding its role in the international cooperation through WMO programmes.
As part of the cooperation, KMA is supporting the weather forecasting guides worldwide based on Numerical Weather Prediction(NWP).

  • KMA International Cooperation Program :
    • RAII(Regional Association II) Project
    • SWFP (Severe Weather forecasting Program)
    • Partnership between the KMA & East-Africa

RAII (ASIA)

WMO's Regional Programme supports the six WMO Regional Associations, which coordinate regional activities by identifying the needs of Members. Regional Associaion II covers the Asia area including WMO 35 members.
The KMA has operated the web site for RAII programme since January 2006 to provide weather charts including the city-specific Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) products to developing countries via the internet. The project was developed through the coordination of Honk Kong Observatory (HKO), in association with the KMA and the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), as a pilot project. It was finally approved by WMO as the operational project in July 2011. This project aims at offering an affordable means for developing countries to access NWP products and apply them to their public weather services. This is accomplished through the generation of city forecasts by more advanced NWP centres, namely the KMA, HKO and JMA, on their respective web sites for access for developing countries.

SWFP (SeA, CA, and SA)

The WMO Severe Weather Forecasting programme (SWFP) was started as a Severe Weather Forecasting Demonstration Project (SWFDP) in 2006. Since its inception, it has been successfully strengthening capacity of the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) in developing countries to deliver improved forecasts and warnings of severe weather to save lives and livelihoods, and protect property and infrastructure. Since 2016, the project in collaboration with WMO Public Weather Services Programme, is also focusing on developing capacity of the participating countries on impact-based forecasts and warnings to improve warning products and services for improved decision-making. i.e. to deliver potential effects of forecast weather on users and stakeholders. The Eighteenth World Meteorological Congress (Cg-18, June 2019) through its Resolution 15 (Cg-18) decided to remove the 'demonstration' designation of SWFDP to refer it as Severe Weather Forecasting programme (SWFP) in consideration of the fact that Project has demonstrated the capability of the cascading forecasting process.

The first SWFDP regional subproject was started in south-eastern Africa in 2006. Currently SWFP involves and benefits over 75 developing countries, LDCs and SIDS in eight sub-regions including Southern Africa, South Pacific, Eastern Africa, South-East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, West Africa and Eastern Caribbean, with contributions from various global and regional centres and support from donors/partners.

In SWFP, global NWP centres provide available NWP and EPS products including in the form of probabilities for a specific time frame. KMA has been taking part in SWFP as a global NWP centres specifically for the three sub-regions (South-East Asia, South Asia, and Central Asia) and providing the several weather charts based on the NWP and EPS products similar with RA II.

Partnership between the KMA & East-Africa

The KMA and ICPAC (the Intergovernmental Authority on Development Climate Prediction and Applications Centre) signed an MOU for cooperation in the field of climate variability and change adaptation technologies in April 2010. The 2010 KOAFEC (Korea-Africa Economic Cooperation) was held in Seoul in Sep. 2010, attended by Ministers from the African countries and Korea, and they signed a joint declaration for 2010 Seoul KOAFEC. Both sides agreed to further strengthen close cooperative ties between Korea and Africa to promote good relations and economic development including cooperation for green growth.
Based on the action plan, the KMA supports NWP products and forecast guidances for East Africa.