The Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) is partnering with the Centre of Hydrometeorological Service of the Republic of Uzbekistan (Uzhydromet) on a four-year project to enhance the country’s resilience to the changing climate and extreme weather events.
Funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland through an Institutional Cooperation Instrument, the project aims to strengthen the capacity of Uzhydromet to provide weather and early warning services that meet the needs of Uzbek society.
Uzbekistan is exposed to earthquakes, drought, flooding, mudslides and landslides. Specifically, climate change causes higher temperatures, greater variability in precipitation and increased frequency of extreme weather events. These events increase the pressure on water resources, land, biodiversity and ecosystems, making the economy and its development sensitive to weather and climate conditions.
The cooperation project will modernize the weather and early warning service provision of Uzhydromet by installing open-source and free SmartMet and SmartMet Alert software developed by FMI. In addition to the automation of weather service processes, custom-tailored weather and early warning products will be more readily available.
The project will pilot newly tailored weather and early warning products at a community level. It will look to build capacity at all steps of the value chain for weather and early warning services, from observations to customer services.
Additionally, there is a growing need for reliable information on real-time air quality to assess health and environmental impacts, inform the public and plan emission reduction strategies. The project will install a pilot network of low-cost air quality sensors after verifying them against the reference-level air quality station of Uzhydromet. Uzhydromet staff will also receive additional training throughout the collaboration.