By Richa Noriega
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has partnered with Philippine research firms to study the complicated weather phenomena in the Philippines.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (Youtube)
Hal Maring, Radiation Sciences Program Manager of NASA, together with Dr. Gemma Narisma, Executive Director of Manila Observatory, discussed in an interview with ANC on Tuesday between the partnership and the impact of their comprehensive study on the weather and climate in the country.
“ campaign is called CAMP2Ex (Cloud, Aerosol and Monsoon Processes Philippines Experiment). It is important because there are many things that we don’t understand right now fully in our environment and one of them is really precipitation,” Dr. Narisma said.
“We see that they are not able to completely replicate rainfall that has happened in the past and it is one of the uncertain things and therefore this campaign is really important in terms of understanding those processes so that we are also able to improve our weather forecasting and also climate modeling for future climate changes,” she added.
“The partnership came from a mutually recognized interest in the region and it was atmospheric science-driven and so we CAMP2Ex came out of that so the study of how small particles suspended in the air transported from significant distance effect meteorology and particular precipitation that’s the goal of why we’re here,” Hal Maring said.
Developing scientific industry in PH
Dr. Narisma explained the impact of the campaign and the effect for the development of future scientists in the Philippines.
“So the first part specifically for our science agenda as Filipino scientist we’re concerned about how urbanization interacts with meteorology and how pollution, let’s say urban cities affect weather and climate and how all of these things intertwine with each other because it’s not as simple direct effect.
There are a lot of complicated effects and feedback mechanisms there and we are concerned about how these things will intern,” Dr. Narisma said.
“The second aspect is the involvement of atmospheric scientist that are young researchers and the way they are now interacting with US scientist developing their own science questions and our capacities being built they are exposed in some kind high-level campaign in NASA is invaluable and the learning will not stop here during this campaign it will continue on,” she added.
Maring said developing the level of expertise of the young scientists will be useful for the future of scientific research in the Philippines.
“Developing the level of expertise that I see these young scientists moving toward will be very useful in terms of future scientific research in the Philippines but also the sort of everyday things you need to know like better weather forecast and do I go on a picnic today to important things like agriculture so in a more,” Maring said.
Effect on the PH society
Dr. Narisma said the goal is to minimize the disaster risk and build a resilient society.
“The end goal is to really minimize the risk to disasters that’s the bottom line and we know that. We have a high vulnerability, high exposure to these extreme events and when you think about the risk there are three key factors the hazard whether that’s a typhoon, drought, extreme precipitation and we have exposure and extreme vulnerability,” Dr. Narisma said.
“What we are doing here is understanding the hazard because if we do not know what the enemy is or how that will change in the future we won’t be able to address the risk. And therefore the science that has been done now addresses the hazard and how that might increase the risk and what we should do so that able to address that risk, to manage that risk and we build a resilient society. That’s the end goal for the Philippines,” she added.