Current opportunities and challenges in developing hydro-climatic services in the Himalayas: report of pump priming project November 2019

The India-UK Water Centre (IUKWC) promotes cooperation and collaboration between the complementary priorities of NERC-MoES water security research. This report assesses the significant issues for hydro-climatic modelling and service development in the mountain regions of northern India. It is the main output from an IUKWC Pump Priming Project that ran from March to August 2018 and has been produced by an author team of climate scientist, hydrologists and glaciologist from India and the UK. It is found that although state-ofthe-art weather forecasting, climate, hydrological and glacier models are being used there are still substantial prediction uncertainties on all prediction timescales. There is a lack of detailed understanding of regional meteorological and hydrological processes, which results in potential misrepresentation of them in the models. Large-scale drivers of regional climate variability in the region have been identified but questions remain about their relevance on different timescales, their interaction, and their representation in global weather forecasting and climate models. Improving short-term predictions and climate change projections requires more meteorological, hydrological and glaciological observations in the Himalayas, improvements in data sharing, as well as additional efforts to integrate meteorological and hydrological modelling. There is also a need for improved communication of predictions to users, which should include their uncertainties. The report is intended for workshop participants, India-UK Water Centre Open Network members and stakeholders.