(MAY 24)—A new facility for weather forecasting at the UPD College of Science, Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology (IESM) was inaugurated on Mar 23.
The Synoptic Laboratory serves as a laboratory room for meteorology, oceanography and climate graduate courses like Meteorology 203 – Methods of Analytical Meteorology and Oceanography, Meteorology 212 – Climate Monitoring and Prediction, Meteorology 222 – Satellite Meteorology and Meteorology 234 – Numerical Weather Prediction.
The Laboratory also provides access to weather-related data by combining analyzed weather observations like soundings, satellite images, radar images and numerical parameters with conceptual models in the synoptic scale (~300-1000 km and duration of 1-10 days) to examine weather condition.
Enabling the laboratory to achieve its functions are six TV monitors (acting as a hyperwall) used for analyzing and displaying synoptic data; 11 interconnected workstations: 10 for students’ use and one as main computer connected to the TV monitors; meteorological software (MatLab, R, ArcGis, Python, Weather Research Forecasting Model, etc.) and two iPads used for drawing synoptic charts.
The facility inauguration was the highlight of the 15th year anniversary celebration of IESM, the only institution offering graduate degrees in Meteorology in the Philippines.