Climate Change Projections and Impacts on Small Drinking Water Systems of Bangladesh

Climate change is affecting the entire world and its inhabitants, especially the poor, and more severe impacts are expected as climate extremes and variability increase. Bangladesh is already burdened with enormous number and types of challenges most of which are very complex in nature. Adding climate change mitigation and adaptation to the other challenges facing by the country is an enormous burden; and at the same time the country must accommodate another forty thousand new residents every week.
Poverty alleviation is the highest priority issue in development policies and strategies of Bangladesh. Climate change has the potential to jeopardize our achievements in the recent years in poverty reduction. Increases in droughts, floods, cyclones and other extreme events would add to stresses on water resources, agricultural production, human health, energy and infrastructures. Yields of important crops are projected to decrease due to temperature variability, changing pattern of rainfall, rise of sea level and saline intrusion in agricultural land which would subsequently result in food and water insecurity. According to IPCC prediction, by the end of the century 29,846 km2 area of land will be lost in Bangladesh and L4.8 million people will be landless due to sea level rise. No wonder, our already scarce drinking water sources will be scarcer.
However, there are limited study in the country where efforts have been made to figure out more specific present state of climate change in Bangladesh by analyzing the observed trends of climate variables like temperature, precipitation and evaporation, with associated key vulnerabilities such as cyclones, coastal flooding, sea level rise etc.
This publication is the outcome of a research where both global and regional climate models are used to make projections of changes in future climatic conditions of Bangladesh on monthly basis, for the period of 201.1to 2100, in terms of precipitation variability, change in temperature and evaporation rate. The research also attempted quantifying the possible water quantity into a typical drinking water pond as well as a household rain water storage system in any of the year up to 2100 on monthly basis through development and implementation of a hydrologic water balance model by incorporating the projected changes in future hydro-meteorological climate variables along with increasing human consumption into the geometry of the particular systems.
 

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