Dry dust and haze usually welcome the dry season in Nigeria with its attendant adverse effect on flights. The writer x-rays weather conditions in the country and how they affect air transportation safety.
According to Livescience, the disappearance of an Air France jet that hit a patch of thunderstorms and lightning over the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 raised questions about the aviation threats that natural hazards pose and how dangerous they are.
Air France Flight 447 left Rio de Janeiro heading for Paris May 31, 2009 carrying 228 people, according to news reports. The last contact with the plane came just after it hit a rough patch of weather and signaled a possible electrical malfunction.
Some officials then said a lightning strike could have disabled the plane and described it as a rare incident, though there are several other weather phenomena that pilots must be wary of.
In Nigeria there was the well-known Sosoliso Airlines Flight 1145, which crashed on December 10, 2005 at the Port Harcourt International Airport and the cause was attributed to missed approach due to pilot error aggravated by low level wind shear. It killed 108 passengers and crew, including a lot of children.
In 1973 there was the most tragic disaster in Nigeria air transport history, known as the Kano Air disaster involving Boeing 707 on January 22, 1973, which crashed while attempting to land at Kano International Airport, killing over 176 passengers and the crew. The crash was attributed to bad weather.
Also, there was the ADC Flight 53 on October 29, 2006, which crashed shortly after takeoff from the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, killing 105 passengers and five-crew. It was also attributed to low-level wind shear.
In fact, many industry experts said that weather was responsible or contributed significantly to many of the air accidents that happened in Nigeria.
These accidents prompted the federal government to prioritise the development of weather infrastructure at the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET).
In a paper he presented recently to mark the convocation ceremony at the Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT), the Director-General of NiMET, Dr. Anthony Anuforom gave an insight into weather changes in Nigeria and why Nigeria is highly vulnerable to Climate Change based on the Maplesoft Climate Change Vulnerability Index, which places the country as the 3rd most vulnerable country in the world. He said “this is an issue of serious concern that requires decisive and coordinated action.”
Reduction of Greenhouse Emissions
Anuforom served as a member of the Presidential Committee that finalised Nigeria’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions to Reduction in Green Gas Emission (INDC) before its submission in 2015. His major contribution was to highlight the need to include Adaptation component in Nigeria’s INDC. According to him, this position was based on the fact that Nigeria had been identified to be among the top 10 most vulnerable countries to Climate Change. (By 2015 Assessment Nigeria ranked as the 3rd most vulnerable country to Climate Change).
“Furthermore, His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari had, at various fora stated the commitment of his administration to combating Climate Change. In his address at the 70th General Assembly of the UN in September 2015, he made the following pronouncement, among others while contributing to the discussion on combating climate change:
“To address these negative effects, we have developed a national policy to guide Nigeria’s response to climate change. Our response is broadly based on the twin strategy of mitigation and adaptation.”
Mr. President further stated that: “The Paris agreement should be rules-based, predictable, and robust to adequately address climate change vulnerabilities. It is essential that the least developing countries and small island developing states receive the institutional capacity support for mitigation, adaptation, gender and climate change linkages towards building a sustainable environment.”
Anuforom said In the light of the above, the Committee included Adaptation in addition to Mitigation to the Nigeria’s INDC.
Mitigation Strategies and Adaptation
The Director General said that the adaptation component of Nigeria’s INDC is derived largely from the National Adaptation Strategy and Plan of Action for Climate Change Nigeria (NASPA-CCN) and that the goal of the adaptation component spells out actions to be taken to reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts, minimise risks, increasing resilience, improving adaptive capacity, leveraging on new opportunities and facilitating collaboration within the country as well as the global community.
“The INDC outlines adaptation strategies for 13 sectors, namely: agriculture (Crop and Livestock), water Resources (Fresh and Coastal), forestry, biodiversity, health and sanitation, energy, human settlement and housing. There are also transportation and communication, industry and commerce; disaster management, migration and security, livelihoods, vulnerable groups and education
“Weather observation and forecasting, as well as other climate services provided by NiMet are required for implementing the strategies set out for most of the sectors,” Anuforom said.
Accurate Weather Report
According to pilots and air traffic controllers, Nigeria has improved significantly in providing accurate weather reports. After the tragic crashes of 2005 and 2006 the federal government started investing money in the Nigeria Meteorological Agency and started the acquisition of modern weather equipment like the Doppler Weather radar and other weather infrastructure that international carriers no more depended on satellite to get weather reports related to Nigeria. They now rely on NiMET.
In accurate weather report, Dr Anuforom said although the development is still ongoing, the level so far attained in weather forecasting by NiMet enables it to extend its services beyond Nigeria to other countries in the ECOWAS sub-region. Presently the Agency produces daily TV weather forecasts for Sierra Leon and Liberia. This is in addition to the training of weather observers and forecasters for these and other English-speaking African countries.
He said that /the meteorological services that started with weather observation at Akassa and Lagos in the late 19th century has grown into what is now NiMet with a network of fifty-four synoptic stations operating at international standards.
He said that the purpose of observing weather and collecting data is to, among other things; predict what the conditions will be at a future time, explaining that weather forecasting is the process of predicting the changes that may occur in the state of atmosphere over a certain period and the likely conditions at a future time ranging from hours to days.
“The weather forecast information an airline pilot needs to fly an aircraft safely from one airport to another is different from that needed by a merchant ship captain or the forecast information needed by a farmer to decide the most appropriate time to apply fertilizer in the farm. This is because a given weather parameter may be more relevant to some aspects of weather sensitive activities than others.
“For instance, while pressure, visibility, wind speed and direction are necessary forecast information for the takeoff and landing of an aircraft, they are not directly relevant to farming. Rather the rainfall and sunshine are more important for farming. In keeping with the Agency’s mandate, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) produces weather forecasts to meet the specific needs and demands of all sectors.”
Adherence to Weather Reports
Industry observers said there was a time Nigeria pilots and others who operate into Nigerian airspace were not depending on local weather reports because of the question on their reliability. But that time had long gone. Now, all the international carriers and over fliers who pass Nigerian airspace to other destinations rely on NiMET weather reports.
Anuforom said that with advancements in computing and ICT infrastructure, the weather forecasting procedure in NiMet has become highly modernized in the past few years. He said modern technology has eliminated the stress of manual data collection and analysis before a forecast is generated. He noted that the contemporary practice involves the use of supercomputers to produce Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) Models.
“These models provide surface and upper air simulated data at various significant levels in time steps of three hours. Depending on the time of the forecast, the forecaster is at liberty to download these NWP products which provide a variety of information on the state of the atmosphere, e.g.: upper level winds, temperature, humidity, divergence, pressure, vorticity, vertical velocity, geopotential heights, CAPE, etc.
“All these variables are available from different NWP Model Centres, such as European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF), U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Meteo France, UK Met, Duetscher Wetterdienst (DWD) (German Weather Service), etc,’’ Anuforom said.
The Director General stated that NiMet presently uses the Consortium for Small-scale Modeling (COSMO) Model to make forecast with spatial resolution of 7 km and 72-hour lead time, which is also being used by our marine meteorology unit to produce forecasts for the maritime sector, adding that the capacity of COSMO model to generate point forecasts has been put into practical use by NiMet.
“In 2015 there were concerns that the type of devastating flood experienced in Nigeria in 2012 could reoccur. In addition to the Seasonal Rainfall Prediction NiMet had issued earlier in the year, the agency commenced the use of NWP using the COSMO model to monitor rainfall and make forecasts with 72-hour lead-time, at locations upstream.
“The 2012 flood was one of the worst weather-related disasters in Nigeria. It directly affected 30 States in Nigeria, killed 363, injured 5,851 and displaced 3,871,053 persons. The total value of destroyed physical and durable assets caused by the floods in the most affected states was estimated to have reached N1.48 trillion. The loss in human lives, property and infrastructure inflicted by that flood could have been greatly reduced if the early warning issued by NiMet in March 2012 had been heeded’’, Anuforom said.
Weather is very critical in air transport. These days it is believed in the aviation circles that modern technology has made the equipment; that is the aircraft, almost perfect. The weaknesses are human error and weather. To conquer weather there must be accurate weather report, which operators must adhere to. NIMET is effectively doing that for Nigeria.
THISDAY
