SAPRISE brought together UK and Indian scientists to make progress in understanding what affects the South Asian monsoon on different time scales. The ultimate goal of the project was to improve predictive capability and to therefore potentially improve the lives of those people affected by monsoon rains.

SAPRISE used models and observations to investigate driving processes, variability, predictability and forced changes in South Asian precipitation on multiple time scales. A key focus was on interactions with the Indian and remote ocean basins and on the local and remote interactions with the dynamic and radiative effects of aerosol, addressing gaps in previous studies.

Specific Objectives were to:
1. Investigate processes responsible for present day mean, variability and change in South Asia precipitation and test the ability of state-of-the-art climate models to simulate this.
2. Evaluate the skill of initialised experiments in predicting South Asia precipitation variability and investigate mechanisms for predictability.
3. Investigate changes in South Asia precipitation and its drivers and interactions in a changing climate.
4. Provide a seamless assessment and syntheses of results to advance our understanding of precipitation variability, predictability and change in precipitation in South Asia.

A further objective was to promote lasting collaboration and sharing of data and modeling expertise between Indian and UK climate modelers, observational experts and climate prediction teams and provide training and development to scientists in both countries.

The SAPRISE project was funded by the Natural Environment Council (NERC) with the grant references - NE/I022841/1 and NE/I022469/1 - led by Professor Matthew Collins (University of Exeter) and Professor Eleanor Highwood (University of Reading).