National Centre for Hydrology and Meteorology (NCHM) is an autonomous scientific and technical organization of the Royal Government of Bhutan responsible for understanding the behaviors of atmosphere, its interaction with cryosphere and water bodies, the weather and climate and distribution of the country's water resources. It is a nodal agency responsible for generation of information and delivery of products and services on weather, climate, cryosphere and water resources in Bhutan.

The Centre is governed by a Governing Board (GB) and members (head of agency) from the climate sensitive sectors The Boardt provides strategic and policy direction for overall governance of the Centre.The Centre is the national designated focal point for the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and other regional organizations dealing with weather, climate and flood. The Head of the Centre is designated as the Permanent Representative (PR) of Bhutan with the WMO.

The project "Developing Capacities for Effective Climate Services in Bhutan (2020-2022)” was supported by the WMO with financial support from the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). The project was implemented by the Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (RIMES) for Africa and Asia” in collaboration with National Center for Hydrology and Meteorology (NCHM).

The main aim of the project is to enhance the capacities of climate services knowledge and application in Bhutan through the development of a customized Climate Services Toolkit (CST). The project developed the following main components of CST:

• Integration of sub-seasonal to seasonal forecast for sector users;
• Climate indices and access to regional and global reanalysis data and
• Capacity building of NCHM and sector users

Sub-seasonal to Seasonal (S2S) Predictions for Bhutan is prepared with the support from the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), Government of India. The model used for the system is CFSv2 coupled model (Atmospheric and Ocean model) which runs once every week (Wednesday), with the 16 Ensemble Members at the horizontal resolution of around 25 km, and the products are made available the next day (Thursday). Therefore, the S2S Predictions for Bhutan will be generated every Friday. S2S Predictions for Bhutan is carried out for two climate variables, rainfall, and temperature.

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Generally, the forecast output is produced on a weekly basis for a period of a month for both the variables. The current products available from NCHM are on pilot basis which needs further studies and validation with the ground observations until the product is fully operationalized. The S2S system automates the whole platform of data access, processing, and report generation process.

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