Sania B Mahtab

Any measure to eradicate income poverty, which is the principal goal of any economic plan for a developing country like Bangladesh, is not sustainable if there prevails an acute water poverty in major cities of the country. The coastal part of Bangladesh is extremely affected by fresh water crisis due to increased salinity intrusion due to the sea level rise in the Bay of Bengal. In this study Water Poverty Index (WPI) was used as a tool to monitor the progress of water sector in a pilot site across the tidal river Bakkhali situated in the southern part of the country. Rubber Dam is hypothesized as a probable adaptation measure to mitigate the climate change impacts in the selected site. The construction of the dam in the pilot site results in an overall improvement in WPI by 44.35%. WPI is an useful means to identify the areas where more attention is needed from water management perspective. The present study indicated that the access to safe water and sanitation needs to be improved in the pilot area along with reducing conflits among water users. Considering other factors it can be recommended that the rubber dam practice can be replicated for other coastal areas having the same geographical situation of Bakkhali tidal river to minimize the poverty stress.

With the exception of the relatively dry western region of Rajshahi, where the annua 1600 mm, most parts of the country receive at least 2300 mm of rainfall per year. Because of its location just south the Himalayas, the region of Sylhet in northeastern Bangladesh receives the greatest average precipitation. About 80 % rain falls during the monsoon season. Climate change is one of the biggest issues confronting humanity in the 21st give rise to changes in weather patterns, and an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme events. Climate c extremes towards conditions that will stress vulnerable countries such as Bangladesh. Changes in mean temperature values could lead to amplified responses to their extreme values. The objective of the present research includes the precipitation extreme indices for selected meteorological stations in Bangladesh. Precipitation data from 1961-Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) are used in this analysis. BMD data from a total of 22 stations are research. 11 extreme indices related to precipitation are considered in the present study. The precipitation ex calculated using RClimDex, which is written in statistical software package R. The maximum 1-day precipitati maximum 5-day precipitation (RX5day); simple daily intensity index (SDII); numbers of heavy (R10mm), very he extremely heavy (R50mm) precipitation days; consecutive wet days (CWD); very wet days (R95p), extremely wet days (total wet-day precipitation (PRCPTOT) have been increasing in most of the BMD stations. Only consecutive dry days to be decreasing. The trends of the precipitation extreme indices indicate a higher precipitation in the future.

Climate change impacts are no longer a delusion to the people of Bangladesh, it is now a cruel reality! Bangladesh lying in the lower riparian region of the mighty Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin drains out the flows from these rivers into the Bay of Bengal through the coastal drainage basin. The coastal area represents 32% of the country's geographical area and a home for about 6.85 million households i.e 28% of the country's total population (Population Census in 2001). This region is characterized by a dynamic ecology having the Sundarbans Mangrove forest and natural fisheries. Bangladesh's coast-already a worst victim of natural disasters like cyclones, salinity intrusion and ingression of soil salinity and flooding and climate change will act as a stressor to change the pattern, frequency and severity of these extreme events. Extremes are the infrequent events that lie at the tail ends of the probability distribution function. In their fourth assessment report the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) states that the changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme events are likely to have a larger immediate impact that changes in the mean. The main focus of this article is to study the trends in the historical extreme precipation events from 1961 to 1990 using the data from the selected coastal meteorological stations. The Mann-Kendall trend analysis (Mann, 1945; Kendall, 1975) is used to detect the presence of significant change and the magnitude of change. Geographical Information System (GIS) is used to show the variation of trends over the coastal region.