The meeting was organized by collaboration of CARE NEPAL and IHRR at Hotel Marriot on 18 August,2022. The participants of the meeting were from various organizations like IHRR, CARE NEPAL, and OXFORD POLICY MANAGEMENT along with Governmental authorities and departments like DHM, NDRRMA, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, and MoHA.

The first presentation was made by Dr. Dharmaraj Uprety and highlighted the present scenario of Heatwave and Covewave in Nepal. He shared the necessary changes and initiatives be be made to address this issue. Dr. Uprety said, “Nepal doesn't have its standard criteria defined for the definition of Heatwave and Coldwave. Nepal should set its criteria for Heatwave and Coldwave to address the problem completely. The climate of Nepal is very different from other nations because of its complex geographical nature. Most of the works done in this field follows IMD guidelines, which may not address the issues of climate change overall Nepal completely.”

Dev Raj Gautam, Senior Resilience Manager, CARE NEPAL, briefly discussed the ‘PILOT PROJECT’. He conveyed information regarding web based portal of anticipatory tools and its key interventions. The presentation was followed by the insights from Dr. Basanta Raj Adhikari and Dr.Binod Pokhrel. Dr. Basanta Raj Adhikari, the Team Leader for the pilot project, focused on the need of the project. Dr. Adhikari shared the overall methodology and activities to be carried out in this project. Dr. Adhikari highlighted that the web based portal will have have scalability and multilingual features and for the initial development, the stations of Nepalgunj , Khajura , Nepalgunj-Airport , Ranijaurwa, Janakpur, Jalaeshwor, and Lahan are taken under consideration. This project will explore on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model and European Center for Mid-Range Weather Forecasts(ECMWF). Also, this project will support huge functionality on peer review.”

Dr.Binod Pokhrel, Assistant professor, CDHM and the team member of this project, shared about the research gaps in Nepal related to Heatwave and Coldwave. Dr. Pokharel highlighted on the importances of Data for any hazards. Similarly, the dynamics of the micro climate should also be studied. Two small areas of nearby places may have their microclimate. So, the generalization of the data is a difficult task. Dr. Pokhrel also highlighted on the variety of statistical tools and techniques for the assessment. 

Mr. Ajay Dixit, expert on DRR, shared his experience on climate change. Mr. Dixit stated the comparison of Kathmandu from 1984 to 2020, and how the effects are seen. Mr. Dixit also focused on the term "Heat" as Heat  is a threat, not the temperature. He focused on the understanding of the difference between temperature and wet bulb temperature. Mr Ajay led the discussion and interacted with different participants for their advice and comments for this project.

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