2 deadlines missed to upgrade weather forecasting system

Bangladesh Meteorological Department is set to miss yet another deadline for automatizing its thunderstorm and lightning forecast systems.
A sudden rise in casualties caused by lightning and thunderstorm prompted the government to undertake in December 2014 a three-year project to upgrade the country’s manual forecasting facility to an automated one.
In June 2017, the deadline for implementing the Tk 620-million project was extended by one year. 
‘We might need extending the deadline by another year,’ said Mozidul Islam, the project director.
He said that land acquisition problems were causing the delay in implementing the project. 
At least 1,000 people died struck by lightning since 2015, when implementation of the project began. 
And at least 12 others were killed by lightning in the first week of April. 
Scientists predicted steady rise in lightning due to global warming. 
In 2016, Bangladesh recognized lightning as a disaster.
Mozid expects automated forecasting system to minimize loss of life and other destructions caused by lightning by predicting thunderstorms’ routes that would enable the met office to issue advisories to people about the possibility of lightning striking in advance.
The automated system would enable weathermen to track formation of lightning producing clouds from 14 weather stations across the country, he said.
International researches revealed that lightning caused increasing disasters like wildfires in select parts of the world in recent years.
A 2014 research, published in the Science magazine, revealed that one degree Celsius rise in the world’s average temperature would increase lightning by 12 per cent.
Though Bangladesh is a major victim of global warming, this country only identifies effects of lightning on people and lightning distribution patterns across the country. 
This country is not known for conducting any research on lightning as such.
In 1986, Abdul Mannan Chowdhury physics professor at Jahangirnagar University identified select districts in the northern zone of Bangladesh as ‘most vulnerable’ to lightning. 
Lack of data, he said, ‘limited the scope of our research for which it was not possible to find out specific impact of global warming on lightning in Bangladesh,’ he said.
‘But theoretically speaking in warmer temperature we have more convective clouds that produce lightning and thunderstorms,’ he said. 
Water vapor produces convective clouds, said Mannan.
And a warmer atmosphere holds more water, he said. 
He said that lack of data makes it difficult to determine whether Bangladesh sky was having more convective clouds now compared to in the past.
Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies senior fellow and former director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department Samarendra Karmakar told New Age that the records of the Rangpur Met Office indicated that thunderstorms increase in the region in 34 years since 1981.
Dhaka University Institute of Disaster Management and Vulnerability Studies professor Mahbuba Nasreen said that before 2012, during field visits they seldom came across incidents of lightning killing people.
But after 2012, said Nasreen, the number of lightning victims increased manifold as she and her students found during field trips. 
Lightning killed close to 1,212 people since 2012, according to the Department of Disaster Management. 
According to the DDM, 190 people were killed in 2012 while the number of casualties caused by lightning rose to 325 in 2017. 
DDM officials said their estimates were based on compensations paid to the victims’ families by the government and therefore the actual number of people being killed by lightning could be much more.
A study done by Kent State University geography professor Dr Thomas W Smidlin in 2012, shows Bangladesh as among the countries where the highest number of casualties due to lightning were reported. 
The study shows that between 500 and 1,000 people are killed by lightning in Bangladesh annually. 

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net