Community Climate Action Sabah
The hills have a way of telling you first.
Long before satellites, there were people watching the hills. In the highlands above Penampang, someone’s always been reading the sky: the shape of a cloud, which way the wind turns before the rain does, which ridge goes dark first.
They call it hujan bukit. Hill rain.
Rain that starts over the ridges, not over you. By the time you feel it, the water’s already on its way down.
It’s the rain people trust least, and watch closest.
A storm can miss the village entirely and still flood it.
The hills fill first, gravity does the rest.
How much warning that actually buys you is what we’re still learning.
So we’re asking:
does the sky still keep its old promises?
Weather Detective
is where we check these signs against the data,
one case at a time.
Every community reads the sky a little differently,
and there’s a lot still to learn.
A field notebook, still being written.
Every sign someone’s trusted to read the weather, and what we’re learning about the conditions behind it.
Hujan bukit
Rain building over the hills
It feels unusually hot but there's no signs of tall cloud towers here in the valley. But when rain started, it hit hard. And within minutes, our river overflowed. This case is under review against satellite records.
Under review
Haze before a dry spell
Not yet documented. We're gathering observations. But we're seeing the signs already (Aug 2026).
Coming soon
Wind shift before rain
Not yet documented. We're gathering observations.
Coming soon
Know a sign of your own?
Not everyone watches the hills. Maybe your family reads the ants, the river, the way the dogs get restless before a storm.
Tell us, wherever you’re from.
How this took root
Sabah’s hills are as unpredictable as they are beautiful, and the same terrain that shelters so much of the state’s biodiversity is what makes storms hard to forecast, which matters for early warning, for disaster planning, and for how Sabah plans its own growth.
Sabah has never stopped working to protect what it has. But conservation, development, and disaster planning are usually designed elsewhere and delivered inward, and the people who actually live inside this biosphere, who feel its weather and its risk daily, often end up as recipients of plans rather than partners in making them.
How this took root
Everyone lives inside the same atmosphere, but nobody experiences it the same way. What a hill village notices before a flood is different from what a coastal community feels, and different again from what a satellite sees.
All of it is knowledge, tested against real seasons and real years, and passed down for a reason. If it isn’t written down somewhere, it fades with the people who carry it.
How this took root
That’s why we started Digital Climate Storytelling,
the first of its kind in Malaysia.
The founding members
The founding team
We're a team of nature-loving scientists with a heart for sharing the hidden wonders of our world to the public.
Dr Marieanne (Mae), a climate scientist, has spent years in the forests and up in the atmosphere observing how the land and the atmosphere interact with each other.
Dr Firdaus (Fert), a soil scientist with UMK-TRaCe, has spent years with his hands in the ground on Sabah’s east coast and the majestic forests of Royal Belum, Perak.
Dr Kumara, an entomologist and nature-based solutions expert with UMK Faculty of Agro-based Industry, has spent just as long paying attention to the insects that quietly hold this landscape together.
Between the three of us, soil, insects, and sky, we’re really just doing what we’re asking everyone else to do:
Paying attention to the ground we actually stand on,
and trusting what it’s been telling us all along.
Our journey
2026
Weather Detective
Local signs, checked against data.
Beyond
An integrated knowledge network
Every community's knowledge feeding early warning, disaster preparedness, and science.
As a young grassroots initiative, we are actively fostering relationships to connect and collaborate with local organisations to grow our community and impact.
Climate Action Sabah is supported by the British Council Alumni UK Climate Action Grant, developed with UMK-TRaCe.