The Department of Meteorology has been established on 31 March 2016 and has started its activity from 17 July 2016 under the Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences in University of Dhaka with the aim to develop of a cohort of professionals who can help foster public or private sector delivery of meteorological services.
Since its inception, the department has focused on quality teaching and researches to produce a cohort of professionals to provide meteorological and climate services. For that purpose, it has procured one High-performance Cluster Super Computing System for NWP modeling and many High-performance Computers with high-speed dedicated internet facilities. The department has its own atmospheric observatory as well as automatic weather stations (AWS). A satellite ground station (SGS) has been installed at the department to receive meteorological and environmental data from various polar orbital satellites. Meteorological data are regularly obtained and recorded at the department under a strong data management system.
The department has been offering a three-semester (One and half year) M.Sc. Program in Meteorology since 2018. The syllabus has been designed in a way that the graduates will be able to describe and explain the origin and evolution of tropical and extra-tropical weather systems across a range of scales; know the relationship between agriculture and weather and climate; provide early warning and advisory to agriculture services for crop management; will be able to analyze the causes of climate change and impacts and mitigation techniques and strategies; know the basic physics and mathematics of application to understanding the atmospheric processes; understand the application of statistical techniques in meteorology, and weather and climate prediction techniques including Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models and their limitations; be able to produce quality weather analysis charts and interpret forecast products accurately and in a timely way, including verbally summarizing their details. The students will learn to work using advanced techniques including understanding the mechanism of data acquisition through satellite and radar technology and interpret the imagery for meteorological application.
The department works in close collaborations with many eminent organizations of home and abroad like Bangladesh Meteorological Department, Bangladesh Water Development Board, Department of Agriculture of the Ministry of Agriculture for the Government of People’s Republic Bangladesh, Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University. The department maintains good relations with University of Reading (United Kingdom), University Nebraska-Lincoln (USA) and Central University of Rajasthan (India), Tribhuban University (Nepal) for similar purposes.