Singapore to play bigger role in improving Southeast Asia’s ability to detect haze

SINGAPORE: Singapore will play a bigger role in improving the region’s ability to detect transboundary haze so countries can work faster to manage its effects.
This comes after the nation was picked by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) to host a specialised centre – the first in Asia and one of two worldwide – to deliver timely and quality vegetation fire and smoke pollution forecasts, observations and information.
Using forecasting models, the main focus of the Specialized Meteorological Centre for Vegetation Fire and Smoke Pollution will be predicting air quality and identifying how far such haze can spread.
“The centre aims to provide information to support decision-making in emergency response, environmental protection, public health management, fire management and law enforcement,” Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu said on Wednesday (Sep 4).
“We hope that these climate data will allow our regional partners to formulate and adjust their own climate adaptation strategies.”
She was speaking at a regional forum organised by the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC) and WMO.
The new centre, which is hosted by the Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS), became operational this month. 
The other centre is in Canada, a nation prone to wildfire. Both Singapore and Canada were assigned to host centres during the WMO executive council’s 78th session in Geneva in June.
The centre brings the WMO’s attention to Southeast Asia, which is relatively more susceptible to issues like smoke and pollution, said Ms Koh Li-Na, director of ASMC, which the MSS has hosted for the past 30 years. 
Ms Koh added that the new centre will be an extension of what the ASMC has been doing – monitoring the haze, weather forecasts and developing climate-related tools for the region.
“In the new centre, we will be bringing in other products and other techniques that will help us to understand better where the haze is moving,” said Ms Koh.
In cases where direct observations cannot be made, these products may be able to help process images and model wind and dispersion better, she added. 
With countries in Southeast Asia at risk of losing 35 per cent of their gross domestic product by 2050 due to climate change, scientists have said there is a pressing need to detect and predict the movement of haze better.
Climate change not only makes the haze worse in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia – the haze itself contributes to global warming, researchers have said.
Ms Koh said that a centre that serves Southeast Asia will bring together the community and the ecosystem. To that end, the centre will work with researchers and meteorological services in the region. 
The Malaysian Meteorological Department is already contributing data on the risks of forest and peatland fires in the region, she noted. 
“What we hope to do is to bring in more of our regional partners and see what they have to offer, see what kind of innovation we have beyond what we already have today,” she said.
In an outlook report in July, the Singapore Institute of International Affairs rated the risk of transboundary haze in 2024 low, owing partly to wetter weather.
“This centre will add capabilities at the regional level with a regional focus … And that is important for us as WMO, and for the world to take care of what is happening here in Southeast Asia,” said the organisation’s secretary general Celeste Saulo.