Sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasts – official launch in Bangladesh

Published on 3 April 2023 by Tamara Lancel

As part of the S2S4Agri project, a team from Weather Impact visited Bangladesh in March 2023. For this project, a S2S (Sub-seasonal to Seasonal) forecasting system was developed, which provides weather forecasts for farmers on the scale of weeks, up to four weeks in advance. The objective of this trip was to train people from BMD (Bangladesh Meteorological Department) and DAE (Department of Agricultural Extension) to use our newly developed S2S forecasting system which was officially launched afterwards.

This training week was perceived with great enthusiasm and participants learned about S2S theory, python language and forecast validation methods. Finally a workshop was hosted where employees from BMD and DAE collaborated to formulate and present their agrological advice, based on the latest forecast. To close the week, the system was officially launched during a large event that made the national television and several online journalism platforms. At the event, attendants were very positive about a development like this in their country and see great potential of S2S forecasts in other sectors. All in all it was a very successful trip and we look forward to the last visit in September, which will mark the end of this project.