Korea to assist Bangladesh improve weather forecasting and climate monitoring

Korea is keen to provide more technical assistance to improve capacity of Bangladeshi weather forecasting and climate monitoring aiming to address the challenges associated with climate-related hazards effectively in Bangladesh.

“The Republic of Korea has been offering technical assistance to improve Bangladeshi capacity in the utilization of satellites,” said a press release of the Korean Embassy on Thursday (Feb 4).

In this process, it said Korea has been providing technical support to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) to enhance weather forecasting and climate monitoring, particularly addressing the risk.

In this regard, Korean Ambassador Lee Jang-keun met with Shamsuddin Ahmed, Director of Bangladesh Meteorological Department, and Dr. Abu Hena Mostofa Kamal, Senior Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, on February 1 and February 4 respectively, and discussed details on the current and future cooperation programmes between Bangladesh and Korea.

Korea has initiated the project entitled “Support of the GEO-KOMPSAT-2A (GK-2A) Receiving and Analysis System in Bangladesh” through the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) to BMD.

The project is scheduled to be completed by 2021. The incurred budget of support project is US $2.5 million. The satellite equipment is expected to be installed by the experts of Korea, and accordingly, the experts of Korea are expected to be dispatched to Bangladesh during the first half of this year.

Through this project, BMD will receive meteorological and environmental data and information collected by GK-2A Satellite, a Korea-owned geostationary meteorological satellite.

Also, BMD will receive sufficient training to analyze satellite data and information utilizing weather forecasting, climate monitoring as well as early warnings for meteorological disaster management.

The training programme in Korea for Bangladeshi officials and experts working in the area of weather forecasting will also be processed throughout the coming years.