The Nigerian Meteorological Society has emphasized the need for precise weather information in the investigation of pandemics as the battle against the Covid-19 global pandemic continues in different parts of the world. .
This was the fulcrum of opinion at the 2020 Conference and 33rd Annual General Meeting (Virtual) of the Society at the University of Ilorin which on the 23rd and 24th November, 2020 with the theme: The Weather, COVID 19 and consequences.
In a communique issued at the end of the Conference, the Society re-affirmed the increasing importance of meteorological information to government and the populace and the need to set priorities in the amelioration of COVID 19.
It recommended that relevant government agencies be empowered and mandated to provide needed information to combat deteriorating environmental health quality in cities which is a leading cause of incurable diseases in the country.
To that effect, the Society proposed the need for new priorities and coordinated efforts based on new technologies to track local and global diseases. It also canvassed for the enhancement of meteorology and its applications to carry out more specific and coordinated research on the effect of weather on the rate of transmission and severity if the incidence of COVID- 19 with particular emphasis on Nigeria is to be reduced. The conference advocated the need for inter disciplinary collaboration to build coordinated strategies aimed at improving meteorological information and early warning systems to ameliorate and prevent unfavourable impacts of weather and climate related natural diseases.
Addressing participants at the Conference, the president of the Society and Director, West Africa Science Service Centre in Climate Change and Adapted Land Use, WASCAL domiciled at the Federal University of Technology Akure, FUTA, Professor Debo Adeyewa said in a rapidly changing world and the weather system, the Society will continue to proffer solutions to challenges in the weather and climate and other related issues confronting the nation.
Adeyewa said his members will also use their expertise to proffer solutions in time like this when Nigeria and the world is facing the challenges of COVID 19, variability in weather and climate .He urged participants to embrace a courageous vision of qualitative service beyond mere academic exercise.
