Moderate cold may continue in next few days: Met Office

Mild to moderate cold wave may sweep over different parts of the country in the next few days, a meteorologist of Met Office told BSS today.

"The country witnessed first cold wave in the second week of December this year... Second spell of cold wave has been sweeping since January 11," Arif Hossain, an official of Bangladesh Metrological Department(BMD), said.

The second spell of cold wave may sweep some parts of the country in the next few days, he said adding, "Northern and south-western parts of the country experienced biting cold as severe cold swept during past of couple of days."

Arif said intensity of cold may decrease in the country as mercury continued to rise in the next few days.

Mild to moderate cold wave is sweeping over Rajshahi, Rangpur, Khulna and Barisal divisions and the regions of Tangail, Faridpur, Madaripur, Gopalgonj, Rangamati, Comilla, Feni and Srimangal and it may continue, a press release of BMD said today. Night and day temperature may rise slightly over the country, it added.

Yesterday's highest temperature 26.3 degrees Celsius was recorded at Teknaf and the lowest 6.5 degrees at Srimangal.

"Winter set late in Dhaka city this season. Intensity of cold in the capital is relatively low compared to other parts of the country, which might be attributed to rapid urbanization," the meteorologist told the news agency.

"Normally winter starts setting in at the beginning of December ... but in recent years we observed delay in its arrival. It is not clear whether it has any link with the climate change," he added.

According to climatologists, shrinking of winter period and prolonging of summer and rainy seasons are linked with climate change. As Bangladesh is already facing adverse impact of global warming, it is witnessing abnormal behavior of weather during the current decade, they added.

Setting of delayed cold might have link with climate change, they observed.