The Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) program was recently established by the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) with the aim of developing an international coordinated framework to generate improved regional climate change projections world-wide for input into impact and adaptation studies, including input to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report.

The CORDEX South Asia program brings together researchers/scientists from the Climate Science and those involved in vulnerability, impacts and adaptation (VIA) research from the Asian region to interpret raw downscaled data for information on how climate processes over the continent may change, and to analyze how these changes may impact important sectors, such as health, agriculture and water security in multiple regions across the continent. The CORDEX South Asia activities are envisaged towards building capacity and expertise within the region to analyze, interpret and apply CORDEX results for decision making that are relevant to the knowledge needs of the South Asian region.
CORDEX-South Asia is a partnership involving the Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR) at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), the World Climate Research Program (WCRP), START, Swedish Meteorological Hydrological Institute (SMHI) and the University of Cape Town's Climate Systems Analysis Group (CSAG).
For the South Asian region, CORDEX presents an unprecedented opportunity to advance knowledge of regional climate responses to global climate change, and for these insights to feed into Working Groups One and Two of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report as well as to on-going climate adaptation and risk assessment research and policy planning in the region. The keys to success of this initiative in South Asia will be in developing a means for analysis and translation of CORDEX data in terms that are relevant to South Asia’s knowledge needs, and in developing the internal capacity to perform the analyses and in doing so create expertise at regional levels in South Asia. The first cadre of people trained on CORDEX can be called upon to help train the next generation of regional experts and advise on future expanded effort on CORDEX analysis and interpretation in South Asia, as well as on the application of CORDEX results to inform climate compatible development in South Asia.

To provide a framework in which downscaling methodologies can be inter-compared through standardized experiment protocols, commonly evaluated against appropriate observations and thereby improved in performance with recommendations appearing for best practices.
To provide a coordinated set of downscaled regional climate simulations (statistical and dynamical) for both the historical past and future periods of CMIP5 GCM simulations. There is also an initiative to develop a regional group in CORDEX South Asia for evaluation, interaction with potential users and training purposes.
To act as a WCRP capacity building activity, e.g. providing a framework for scientists in CORDEX South Asia region to be part of a wider and coordinated international effort, to provide an opportunity for regional scientists to be involved in the production, analysis and delivery of regional climate information for their region and simply to provide better climate information in regions that lack such data.

In response to the critical need for data analysis and capacity development, a consortium of organizations consisting of the CCCR-IITM, WCRP, START, SMHI and CSAG have developed an analysis and training program that will provide an initial assessment of CORDEX output that is regionally focused and prioritized to South Asia’s knowledge needs.
The program, to be administered by CCCR-IITM in collaboration with START and WCRP, will consist of a series of training workshops focused on skill development in working with climate model results, analysis of CORDEX datasets, and compilation and writing of analytical results to be submitted to a special issue of peer reviewed journal(s). The workshops will be augmented by focused mentoring from a team of experts from the climate modeling and VIA communities. The effort will help foster trans-disciplinary collaborations between individuals from the physical sciences and the vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation (VIA) research community, and the participants will benefit from early access to CORDEX data, joint publications, and collaboration with international scientists.