As a one-stop data portal for the HKH region, our Regional Database System (RDS) portal hosts a variety of datasets such as land cover, meteorological, and biodiversity data from the region. To further aid data availability and discoverability in a data-scarce region, we extend the platform to our partners to make their public datasets available to a wider audience.

In 2021, Bhutan’s Ugyen Wangchuck Institute for Conservation and Environment Research shared its weather data for public download from the RDS portal. The dataset, collected under their Himalayan Rhythms Observation and Evaluation System project, consists of daily and monthly temperature and precipitation data for 2015–2020 derived from weather stations installed in 14 schools across Bhutan. The RDS portal also hosts and makes available sea-level model projections data for tide gauge locations in South Asia developed by the Met Office, under the Asia Regional Resilience to a Changing Climate (ARRCC) programme.

We also rolled out our Climate Data Download Tool, which allows users to clip and download customised sub-sets of global and regional climate model datasets for the HKH region. Based on userdefined parameters such as model run and spatial and temporal extent, the tool clips, processes, and packages these large datasets and makes them available for download. This significantly cuts down on the computing resources and time needed by users to prepare such large datasets for analysis. We have further enhanced the tool with the inclusion of the NASA Global Circulation Models and the new state-of-the-art Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIP6) models used in the IPCC AR6 report.