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Pinoy NASA scientist agrees to head RP global warming project
MANILA, Philippines — A Filipino scientist of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has agreed to spearhead a program to monitor the effects of global warming in the Philippines. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) website said Josefino Comiso voiced his willingness for the project during a courtesy call to the DENR. "Comiso has agreed to spearhead a project that will monitor the effects of global warming and to share his knowledge of the phenomenon to the public through DENR's information, education and communication (IEC) campaign," the article in the DENR website said. Funding for Comiso's facility to monitor global warming will come from the Philippine Atmospherics and Geophysical Administration (Pagasa) and will be based in UP Los Baños. The DENR said Comiso expressed support for the DENR's IEC campaign on climate change, saying this addresses the need for the public to be made aware of the consequences of global warming. Comiso was part of a contingent of "balik-scientists" who visited Environment Secretary Joselito Atienza Jr. Other "balik-scientists" included Catalino Blanche, national program leader of the US Department of Agriculture, and Terry Sarigumba of the Georgia Pacific Company. Atienza said apart from global warming, which is attributable to climate change, the Philippines also badly needs help in reforestation and the search for alternative energy. He told his visitors that the DENR has been undertaking massive tree planting and cleanup of the Manila Bay and other major water systems as the department’s contribution to the campaign against global warming. The department is also in the midst of a nationwide IEC campaign to educate the public about the adverse consequences of climate change. Earlier, Comiso has said the Philippines is vulnerable to the accelerated melting of the polar ice caps brought about by global warming. "I think that the Philippines, although it is not emitting a lot of carbon dioxide, is gonna be one of the biggest victims of the effects of climate change," he said. He said the melting of the Arctic ice caps due to global warming will cause sea level to rise and may flood cities and towns near the coast, including Metro Manila. It threatens the country's diverse animal populations from land-based species to the marine population. As a senior NASA scientist, Comiso was the first person to discover the recurrence of polynya in the Cosmonaut Sea south of the Indian Ocean. A polynya is a semi-permanent area of open water in sea ice. He is also one of the authors of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change which created awareness on the environmental phenomenon and earned a Nobel Prize that the panel shared with Vice President Al Gore in 2007. Comiso and the other Filipino scientists returned to the country under the government's Balik-Scientists program, which seeks to make them spend a limited time to aid local research efforts. - GMANews.TV
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