Low-lying Bangladesh is predicted to be one of the worst victims of global warming. Latest climate models indicate its devastating impact on the country. For example, flooding, which affects roughly a fifth of the country each year, will go up by up to 40 percent this century as sea levels rise, monsoons become wetter and more intense cyclones lead to higher tidal surges.

To make things worse, experts say, heavier rainfall triggered by global warming will swamp the country's riverbanks, a previously unforeseen effect, flooding between 20-40 percent more land than today. As a result, the land available to grow rice, vegetables, lentil, onion and mustard crops will be significantly reduced, placing an intolerable pressure on farmers.

The interconnectedness of life on earth has become one of the sentimental clichés of the environmental movement. A recent New York Times article indicated that the expected change in sea levels from Antarctic glacial melting "already constitutes a slow-motion catastrophe for places like Bangladesh..."

Unfortunately, the mainstream US media in general has notoriously downplayed the global warming trends and its catastrophic effects that scientists generally put down to human activities including industrial processes, fossil fuel combustion, and changes in land use, such as deforestation; in other words, the way we power our global economy.

But over here in Bangladesh, where millions of people live in coastal areas, the threat from global warming is real -- inundation of coastal areas, changes in precipitation patterns, increased risk of droughts and floods, threats to bio-diversity and a number of potential challenges for public health.

There is every indication that the climate is undergoing a change for the worse. In Bangladesh, we now experience unprecedented intense heat waves in summer and unusually cold spells in the shorter winters, not to speak of the ever-worsening floods that destroys life and property each year. The weather pattern is getting increasingly erratic, so much so that forecasters at the Met office are often at a loss.

The monsoon floods this year lingered unusually long and took and exceptionally catastrophic turn, submerging almost two-thirds of the country.

An unusual cyclone in the Bay of Bengal in May last year lasted for 10 days instead of the usual 6-7 days. Over this 10-day period, the cyclone became severe, then weak and then severe again before crossing into Myanmar.

Also last year, the country experienced a severe and intolerable cold wave in January, an equally unbearable heat wave coupled with an early flood in May, and an unusual cyclone. And now the monsoon has deficit rainfall and is called 'bad monsoon'.

The lowest temperature recorded during the cold wave that swept the country in January last year hit a 34-year low of 3.4 degrees Celsius in Rajshahi.

During last year's heat wave, the temperature soared to 43.4 degrees Celsius in Satkhira. This year again, the country faced severe heat waves in May and June.

Though it usually rains hard around July, last month's rains broke a 50-year record of 341 mm in 24 hours due to a depression in the Bay. Met officials said the depression took an abnormal twisting path not seen in 100 years.

Although the meteorological office has endeavoured to explain such erratic weather phenomenon as 'inter-annual variation', weather officials generally admit a change in climate citing a study that shows increasing temperature and rainfall over the years.

Published in 2000, the study undertaken by Saarc Meteorological Research Centre and based on data over a 30-year period from 1961-90 shows temperature rising by 0.0037 degrees Celsius a year along with a nearly 5mm increase in annual rainfall.

Environmentalists say the sea level rose between 10 to 25cm in the last century due to global warming and if the trend continues, a fourth of Bangladesh will go under water within the next 25 years.

Climate researchers in reports prepared for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had already predicted crop loss to floods in countries like Bangladesh, an increase in diseases like malaria and dengue fever, asthma and other respiratory diseases, shifting ecosystems resulting in total disappearance of some forests, desertification, etc.

Citing the last assessment report of the IPCC published in 2001, Dr Nasimul Haq, member of the South Asian action network of the IPCC, said Bangladesh would be most vulnerable to this crisis borne out of climate change. "We are already experiencing all of the things that the report said about extreme weather conditions."

Meanwhile, pivotal countries like the US have failed to approve the Kyoto protocol, which aims to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. To become binding, the protocol must be ratified by 55 nations accounting for at least 55 percent of global emissions in 1990.

The US accounts for 4 percent of humanity and yet is responsible for 25 percent of global greenhouse emissions. Compared to 1990 figures, a 17 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions resulted in 2002.