Taipei, March 13 (CNA) A team of scientists from Germany arrived in Taiwan Tuesday to embark on a three-week research project to investigate the effects of megacities on pollution on local, regional and global scales.
The project marks the first time Taiwan has teamed up with an international atmospheric research group to tackle the pressing issue of the country's air pollution, said Wang Pao-kuan (王寶貫), director of Academia Sinica's Research Center for Environmental Changes, at a press conference held in Tainan that day.
Charles Chou (周崇光), deputy director of the research center and point person for the Taiwanese side, elaborated on the project, saying that it will employ German High Altitude, Long Range (HALO) aircraft to make airborne measurements that can then be used in modelling studies.
The HALO will fly all over Taiwan as well as the East China Sea and South China Sea to gather data and make observations on several types of pollutants found in the region, Chou continued.
He said that HALO will be able to conduct a lot of the research that Taiwan has not been able to, while the Taiwanese team will do data gathering and analysis from its air pollution monitoring stations on the ground.
John Burrows, a professor at Germany's University of Bremen, who is leading the team of scientists, said the project has been in the planning stage for years.
His project, titled "The Effect of Megacities on the Transport and Transformation of Pollutants on the Regional and Global Scales," kicked off in April 2016.
The Asia phase of the mission, based in Taiwan from March 13 to April 8, according to its website, will also take the team to Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.
(By Yang Sz-ruei and Kuan-lin Liu)
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