Meteorological Bureau: The weather never sleeps

The day dawned sunny, but it lasted only for a few hours. Before lunchtime, the rain was beating furiously on the glass windows and the day turned gloomy again. “We had already forecast it”, the Macau Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau (SMG) deputy director António Viseu stressed.
Macau weather is not a good work colleague. Not only is it difficult to predict what’s on its mind but also how it is going to behave. And to make things harder, SMG’s daily work is affected by a lack of human resources.

‘In Macau, people are more interested in economy and engineering and less in sciences. It is very difficult to find new people’

Getting to SMG’s headquarters is not easy, either. It is located at the top of the Grand Taipa County Park, which is not linked by bus routes and roads are almost always empty. From up there you can see the entire Macau peninsula, part of Cotai and the local airport.
“Normally, these type of facilities are more exposed to the sky,” Viseu explained.  SMG is installed in a building with 100 rooms distributed in three floors and occupying more than 3,000 square metres. To the west of the main building, there’s a tower 40 metres high equipped with the Doppler Meteorological Radar. The headquarters includes four centres: Meteorological Monitoring, Seismological Monitoring, Climate and Atmospheric Environment, as well as Telecommunications and Processing.
Every day, around-the-clock, people work together with computers and other equipment to advise the population, among other things, about the kind of weather they can expect for the following days.
Before lunchtime, in Meteorological Monitoring, one of the meteorologists is handling an alert level. He speaks on the phone standing in front of one of the dozen computers available in the room.
The noise is spreading over the entire room but the other meteorologist remains relaxed, seating at a table and drawing a map. A few minutes later, everything is back to normal.
“Our monitoring centres work 24 hours and seven days a week. The weather never sleeps and we have to monitor it even during night time,” the deputy director pointed out.

Lack of staff

Apart from the Taipa facility, there is also a branch on Coloane Island and some installations on the Macau Peninsula too, including bridges and flight tracks. “Through this network we get constant, every minute information about the temperatures, wind pressure and rain. That information is analysed and if it reaches critical situations, we issue alert levels to the public”, he said.
“We also get constant information from around the world, each 15 minutes from the Pearl River Delta region and each three hours from the Asia Pacific region,” he added.
More than 100 people work at the SMG, of which 70 are from scientific areas, including meteorology, geophysics, computer and electronic engineering. Around 19 percent of the staff has a master’s degree and is qualified to provide on-site professional training.

‘This year the summer and the winter will be more hot and rainy than usual’

“This group of people is very important to keep our equipment working well,” Viseu said.
Actually, the bureau has been striving to improve its staff qualifications since the 1970’s. “That was when I and another colleague were sent to Lisbon. Before that, only the director held a degree in this area,” he said.
In fact, getting qualified staff is one of SMG’s biggest difficulties. “There is a lack of new people. In Macau, people are more interested in economy and engineering and less in sciences. It is very difficult to find new people. If we can get three or four a year it is not bad,” he pointed out.
However, it is not too much of a strain as Viseu pointed out that the bureau does not need a large number of workers, but rather “specialised human resources that can work with our equipment.”
The problem is also made worse by the lack of bilingual and trilingual staff. “English is not a problem, due to our international relationships. Our main difficulty concerns the second official language – the Portuguese.”
“Most of our staff got their degrees in Taiwan, mainland China, Hong Kong and even in Australia. Their Chinese is good, but the main problem is the Portuguese,” he admitted.

Tricky weather

The SMG was established officially in 1952. Before that, regular meteorological observations were made under the responsibility of the Portuguese Navy. Despite its unstable nature, the observations have been recorded since 1861.
Currently, the weather forecast is a lot easier than before, according to Viseu. The bureau is not surprised by the weather, thanks to the current technologies. “The weather forecast doesn’t become a knotty problem like in the old days,” he said.
However, it is still a complex job, especially in Macau. “The weather is the result of several factors. It is very difficult to forecast it and, for that reason, we hold a meteorological briefing every day to discuss the forecasts. The information that people get everyday is a product of 10 or 20 heads,” he pointed out.
The bureau uses several meteorological and operational calculations that range from 14 to 3 days of forecast. However, the four-day forecast is considered the most suitable to the city, due to its meteorological and geographical features.
“Even in four-day forecasts, only 70 percent are reliable. You have to pay attention to the date of the forecast, because the more time goes by, less reliable the forecast is,” he added.
Macau is located between the biggest continent, Asia, and the biggest ocean, the Pacific and that means trouble.
“When there are two very different bodies, on their boundaries there is always a very critical situation. Macau is between sea and land, and between the tropics and a temperate zone. Especially in the summer, tropical air masses are very unstable. The weather can be very good and suddenly everything changes,” he explained.
To forecast the weather for the rest of the year is an impossible mission. Still, it is possible to set a trend, based in climatology.
“This year summer and winter will be hotter and more rainy than usual,” Viseu said.

‘We are forecasting four typhoons, while the annual average is six’

Compared to 20 years ago, Macau has more hot nights and the trend is set to continue into the next decades. “Macau is following the world trend and, particularly, the regional weather development. In the future, people will have to turn on the air-conditioning more often at night,” he stressed.
According to Viseu, the main reason for the changes has nothing to do with the increase in high-rise buildings in Macau, but rather it is the region’s fault.
“Macau is too small and it is very affected by the region. The construction factor can have a slight effect, but it has no consequences in the long run.”
“On the contrary, in Hong Kong construction on the coastline has a negative impact on the weather, as it takes almost 15 minutes to go from the coastline to the centre of Kowloon. Macau’s width is two kilometres long. Even with tall buildings, the air can always pass through it,” he pointed out.
Apart from the meteorological centre, the SMG runs an Aeronautic Meteorological Centre and a network of stations to monitor air quality, seismological activity and environmental radiation.