INTRODUCTION

The country of Bangladesh frequently experiences severe large-scale flooding from the discharges of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. Our group's (CFAB) mission is to provide both forecasts of upper-catchment severe flood-stage discharges along with forecasts of precipitation to this country to support their efforts to provide advanced warning for evacuation and relief measures. This work is being done in partnership with the government of Bangladesh, the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF), the U.S. Agency for International Development, Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre, along with other governmental and non-governmental organizations both domestic and international. This site presents the work we are doing to meet these ends on what we call the "short-term", or 1 to 10 day discharge forecasts. The discharge forecasts are calculated for gaging stations near the border of Bangladesh as the water flows into the country: namely, the Bahadurabad gaging station for the Brahmaputra and Hardinge Bridge for the Ganges. These forecasts are being generated using ECMWF's shortterm ensemble weather forecasts, GPCP and CMORPH satellite precipitation observations, and a combination of distributed and data-based modeling techniques. Within this site you will find this monsoon season's daily updated: discharge ensemble forecasts; probability (or confidence) intervals for these forecasts; the cumulative probability of the river discharges exceeding prescribed danger levels; regional forecasts of precipitation from ECMWF along with recent satellite-derived precipitation estimates.