New service to accurate weather forecast

Bhutan has launched an upper air observation service in Paro that will help the country to get more accurate weather forecasts.

The service will be operation in the months of April, May, and June and is carried out by launching a hydrogen filled balloon that lifts a piece of equipment called a radiosonde.

A radiosonde records features like temperature, rainfall, humidity, air pressure, wind direction and speed, among others, and transmits this information back to a ground station every five seconds.

Once launched, the balloon rises five metres a second until it reaches the stratosphere or between 35-40km above earth, and bursts. The ballon will be launched once every two-days.

Besides helping Bhutan to forecast weather in the coming years, the service would help scientists at the SAARC Meteorological Research Centre who are studying weather in the region so that they can better predict its patterns and be able to provide warnings and advisories to the public when the weather could turn bad in the region.

This SAARC project covers the four countries mostly affected by this volatile weather: Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, and Nepal.

The project has also installed 10 ground weather stations in Bhutan, 24 in Nepal and 50 in Bangladesh.

The three-year project, which is costing Nu 2.9 million for a year, is funded by SAARC through the STORM (Severe Thunderstorm Observation and Regional Modelling) programme which is monitoring and studying the life cycle of severe thunderstorms in the region.