Myanmar is approximately two times Norway’s area, has a long and vulnerable coastline, and a population of about 55 million. Myanmar is exposed to a number of natural disasters, such as tropical cyclones, extreme rainfall/monsoon, floods, landslides, storm surge and earthquakes.

In Myanmar, we work in the project “Institutional support and capacity building for mitigation of weather and climate hazards in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Vietnam”. The project started in 2012 and is funded by Norad. 

We are collaborating with the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology (DMH) which is the national meteorological institute of Myanmar. DMH has the national responsibility for weather forecasting and climate services in Myanmar. Based on their needs, and in collaboration with them, our common goal is to increase the quality of weather forecasting and climate services, strengthen the countries' preparedness and prevention capacity in relation to the forces of nature, and improve the ability to adapt important national infrastructure to climate change. The climate challenges in the region are great and the measures aim to make the partner institutions in the best possible position to provide useful services to both public administration and the general population.

In Myanmar we work with the tools DIANA, Tseries, R and harp.

The collaboration with DMH focuses on the implementation and use of open source weather forecasting tools, training of meteorologists, wave forecasting, use of statistics and verification and climate knowledge.

After the military coup in februar 2021 The Norwegian government decided that Norway is freezing the state-to-state knowledge-development programs between public institutions in Norway and Myanmar. This project is on-hold for the time being.

Another project in  Myanmar, is the WMO project: "WMO Technical Assistance for the Modernization of the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology (DMH)".

This project continues a sa cooperation between MET Norway and WMO.

In this project, the main goal is for DMH to be able to use Diana with more functionality than has been the case so far. With help from WB, DMH is building a new data center where many types of weather data will be available to Diana. This project has been delayed due to the Covid pandemic and the military coup. It will end in March 2022 and unfortunately is not completed.

Kart over Myanmar

Workshop hos DMH

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