Bangladesh has a population of 169 million people. It has the world's largest delta which gives fertile soil but large annual flooding, also because most of the country is below 12 meters above sea level. Besides flooding, Bangladesh is vulnerable to tropical cyclones that form over the Bay of Bengal, as well as heavy thunderstorms, drought, earthquakes, erosion and tsunamis.
In Bangladesh, we are working on the project “Institutional support and capacity building for mitigation of weather and climate hazards in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Vietnam”. The project started in 2011 and is funded by Norad.
We collaborate with Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) which is the national meteorological institute in Bangladesh. BMD has the national responsibility for weather forecasting and climate services in Bangladesh. Based on their needs, and in collaboration with them, our common goal is to increase the quality of weather forecasting and climate services, strengthen the country´s' preparedness and prevention capacity in relation to the forces of nature, and improve the ability to adapt important national infrastructure to climate change. The climate challenges in the region are great and the work aims to put the partner institutions in the best possible position to provide useful services to both public administration and the general population.
In Bangladesh we work with tools like DIANA, Tseries, ESD, R, harp.
The collaboration with BMD focuses on the implementation and use of weather forecasting tools in open source code, training of meteorologists, lightning forecasting, aviation weather forecasts, use of statistics and verification, climate knowledge, downscaling of climate projections.
From Google Maps
Man in rice field
