The Department of Meteorology and Hydrology (DMH) of Myanmar is responsible for providing timely important weather and climate services to different sectors such as agriculture, water, aviation, fisheries, military, etc. It has been functioning over several decades and has been trying to improve services to meet with pressing demands of the country. There is a great need for overall human, technical and institutional capacity enhancement to meet the current and future challenges. Improvements of weather and climate services, which includes generation of information and warnings, dissemination, etc. with state-of-the-art models and technologies are the important areas among others. In realizing the importance of strengthening DMH capacity to an acceptable standard in the region, Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) has devised this technical support to Myanmar for strengthening of human and institutional capacity to deal with hydro-meteorological disasters. This project is a component under the agreement between ADPC and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) Norway Phase II with technical support from Norwegian Meteorological Institute (met.no) of Oslo. This information brief summarizes the project and the concrete project activities that are designed to strengthen activities of DMH in Myanmar. This addresses how to assist DMH to improve its accuracy and reliability in weather and climate services, which includes weather and climate forecasting, early warning systems for hydro-meteorological hazards and customized forecasting for different sectors based on dialogue with stakeholders. This project will help DMH to enhance their further capacity in Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) which can provide enhanced aquracy and advanced numerical skills for tropical cyclone in the Bay of Bengal. The project is implemented from June 2012-December 2014 under meteorological component of Theme 5 of the broader project titled ?Disaster Risk Reduction Initiatives on National and Regional Level in Asia? which is being implemented by ADPC and financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway.

?Provide technical assistance to Meteorological Division of Department of Meteorology Hydrology (DMH) to increase their human and technical capacity in areas of high priority for DMH in their development plan. Provide support to DMH to assist on improving accuracy and reliability in weather forecasting products, climate change modeling as well as in providing early warning system for hydro-meteorological hazards. Assist in improvements in providing customized forecasting for the different sectors based on dialogue with the users. Provide human capacity building and technical skills development training for DMH at Norwegian Meteorological Institute in Norway (met.no) and ADPC.

Capacity need and gap assessment and planning for strengthening capacity of Meteorological division of DMH. Training, Capacity enhancement and Secondment/ in-service skill development of the DMH professionals for improving accuracy and reliability of forecast products and climate modeling. Improvement of customized forecasting and early warning products for different sectors through user dialogue. Pilot demonstration project for enhancement of early warning system products and response system.

Myanmar