High-resolution (250 m) historical and future climate dataset for Bhutan downscaled from 16 CMIP6 general circulation models

This dataset provides high-resolution monthly climate data for Bhutan derived from 16 general circulation models (GCMs) of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) . The dataset was developed by downscaling historical and future climate simulations to a spatial resolution of 250 m using a modified delta change approach that combines GCM-derived climate change signals with a high-resolution observational climatology for Bhutan. The dataset includes four climate variables: precipitation (pr, mm/month), maximum temperature (tasmax, °C), minimum temperature (tasmin, °C), and vapour pressure (vp, kPa). Historical data cover the period 1980–2014, while future projections cover 2015–2100 under four shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) scenarios: SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5. Data are provided as monthly GeoTIFF files in DRUKREF 03 / Bhutan National Grid (EPSG:5266). Files are organized by variable, climate scenario, and GCM to facilitate efficient data access and analysis. To reduce storage requirements while preserving precision, climate variables are stored as compressed 16-bit signed integer GeoTIFFs (INT2S). Original values can be recovered using the following scale factors: Precipitation (pr): divide stored values by 1 Maximum temperature (tasmax): divide stored values by 10 Minimum temperature (tasmin): divide stored values by 10 Vapour pressure (vp): divide stored values by 10 The dataset supports applications in climate change impact assessment, agriculture, biodiversity conservation, hydrology, ecological modelling, species distribution modelling, disaster risk assessment, and environmental planning.