The Southeast Asia (SEA) region is most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change with its high population exposure, pre existing vulnerabilities, and mostly low coping and adaptive capacities of its developing countries. Given the increasing risk to disasters because of extreme events that are more likely to occur in the future due to climate change, it is essential for the region to have robust climate change information to investigate the range of potential climatic impacts, including extreme events, that can happen in the future. To address the need for good climate information, the Southeast Asia Regional Climate Initiative (SEARCI) was conceptualized and established in 2012 and is now part of the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) network through its Southeast Asia Climate Downscaling Project (SEACLID/CORDEX-SEA). Initial results from CORDEX-SEA show that while climate behaviour is reasonably captured well in the region, there are biases in the simulated temperature and precipitation.
These findings from CORDEX-SEA indicate that there are processes in the region, given its complex geographical features, that are not captured by the models and/or that are not fully understood physically. One of these processes is the interaction between aerosols, clouds and meteorology. In August to October 2019, Manila Observatory, NASA, and the US Naval Research Laboratory will conduct an airborne P3 and Lear 35 campaign CAMP2Ex (Cloud Aerosol Monsoon Processes in the Philippines Experiment). The campaign will focus on aerosol and cloud microphysics, aerosol and cloud meteorology, and cloud and aerosol radiation. Regional scientists in particular will look at aerosol transport patterns both from transboundary and local pollution and the potential influence of urban pollution on clouds and precipitation and the potential influence of meteorology on the spatial distribution of aerosols. CAMP2Ex is an important step in understanding local and regional dynamics that can lead to better climate simulations over the region.
While CORDEX-SEA has provided a good platform for providing robust regional climate information and CAMP2Ex will provide better understanding of the atmospheric environment in the region, there are challenges and opportunities to bridging communications and collaboration with the impact modeling community, direct users including local governments, and other stakeholders. In particular, moving towards trans-disciplinary approach from the generation/production to the analysis to the application of climate information to developing potential adaptation and “resilience building” options and solutions continues to be a challenge. This will involve an interactive dynamic relationship between disciplines and different stakeholders for designing the appropriate climate information needed. Such an approach will deviate from discipline oriented methodologies and should tackle climate change through thematic issues and/or sectoral applications where future climatic impacts are deemed to be significant.