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Climate Change Impacts, Scenario and Vulnerability of Bangladesh

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Climate Change Adaptation Actions in Bangladesh

Part of the book series: Disaster Risk Reduction ((DRR))

Abstract

Bangladesh is affected strongly by climate change. Increasing surface air temperature is most prominent in Bangladesh, where an increasing trend and temporal variation in the mean seasonal temperature is observed within the range of 0.4–0.65 °C during the past 40-year period. Although the winter season experiences the minimum rainfall, historical trend is showing a positive inclination in 27 out of 32 rainfall observatories of the meteorological department. The riverine flood (or monsoon flood) is affected by the following climate change related phenomenon, especially due to change in the frequency and intensity in extreme rainfall event may subsequently increase the intensity of flood. Riverbank erosion is one of the major natural disasters of Bangladesh, which is also related to the monsoon flooding. Floods, especially the high intensity floods, often devastate physical infrastructure such as road networks, educational centres, market places, administrative buildings etc. Changes in climate may affect irrigation requirements for all the three cropping seasons: Rabi, Kharif-I, and Kharif-II. At present, western parts of Bangladesh are periodically being affected by droughts in winter months. Since the temperature will rise, and there exists a strong possibility that the winter precipitation will decrease further, it is likely that the moisture content of topsoil would decrease substantially leading to severe moisture stress.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Range of flooded area 50,000–57,000 km2 and range of % inundation 34–38.5 %, as classified by Mirza et al. (2001).

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Nishat, A., Mukherjee, N. (2013). Climate Change Impacts, Scenario and Vulnerability of Bangladesh. In: Shaw, R., Mallick, F., Islam, A. (eds) Climate Change Adaptation Actions in Bangladesh. Disaster Risk Reduction. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54249-0_2

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