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STORY: CTBTO / WEATHER
TRT: 3:27
SOURCE: PREPARATORY COMMISSION FOR THE COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN TREAT ORGANIZATION (CTBTO) / FILE
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / FRENCH / NATS
DATELINE: RECENT / FILE
FILE – CTBTO
1. Nuclear Explosion
FILE – CTBTO – USHUAIA, ARGENTINA
2. Various shots, monitoring seismic stations
FILE – CTBTO – BARILOCHE, ARGENTINA
3. Various shots, infrasound station
FILE – CTBTO – TAKASAKI, JAPAN
4. Various shots, radionuclide and noble gas station
FILE – CTBTO – GREENDLAND
5. Various shots, infrasound sensors
FILE – COURTESY ETHAN FILMS, 2016, ORISSA, INDIA
6. Various shots, village and people on boat
FILE – UNTV – 2011, PAKISTAN
7. Various shots, storm clouds
RECENT – JUNE 2017, NUCLEAR RESEARCH CENTER, BELGIUM
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Lucrezia Terzi, Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK.CEN): “We study all sorts of meteorological processes by correlating the seasonal patterns of the Beryllium-7 with atmospheric circulation phenomena. In one particular case, we studied the Indian monsoons.”
9. Various shots, visuals of the study of Beryllium-7, Science Paper
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Lucrezia Terzi, Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK.CEN):
“There is the possibility of using the Beryllium-7 concentration as a threshold to give an approximately 30 day warning period before the monsoon starts.”
11. Various shots, visuals of the study of Beryllium-7, Science Paper
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Lucrezia Terzi, Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK.CEN):
“It’s a huge difference if you have one week of warning or if you have one month.”
FILE – COURTESY ETHAN FILMS, 2016, BANGLADESH
13. Various shots, young people playing in the water and man harvesting
FILE – UNCHR – 2016
14. Various shots, heatwave, dry earth and boys in the desert
FILE – COURTESY ETHAN FILMS, 2016, SPAIN
15. Various shots, olive groves in dry earth and village
FILE – COURTESY ETHAN FILMS, 2016, PARIS
16. Various shots, Paris Eiffel tower and city
RECENT – CTBTO - JUNE 2017, FRANCE
17. SOUNDBITE (French) Elisabeth Blanc, Research director, Atmospheric Dynamics Research Infrastructure, France:
“We would like to provide more data which is useful for civil applications such as weather forecasts. Because if you are able to forecast the weather several weeks in advance, that would be really quite extraordinary in a number of areas. There was the heatwave in France in 2003 which caused a large number of deaths.”
FILE – COURTESY ETHAN FILMS, 2016, PARIS
18. Various shots, heatwave in Paris and emergency units
RECENT – CTBTO – JUNE 2017, FRANCE
19. SOUNDBITE (French) Elisabeth Blanc, Research director, Atmospheric Dynamics Research Infrastructure, France:
“If we achieve this, there are plenty of implications for agriculture, for industry, for all kinds of things.”
FILE – CTBTO – LOCATION UNKOWN
20. Various shots, monitoring station
RECENT – JUNE 2017, NUCLEAR RESEARCH CENTER, BELGIUM
21. SOUNDBITE (English) Lucrezia Terzi, Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK.CEN):
“Beryllium-7 and the CTBT data set provide a unique opportunity for the scientific community. And therefore it’s also a great opportunity for countries to ratify the Treaty and retrieve this data set for their use.”
RECENT – JUNE 2017, CTBTO CONFERENCE, VIENNA, AUSTRIA
22. Pan left, conference
23. SOUNDBITE (English) Lassina Zerbo, Executive Secretary, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO):
“Scientific collaboration is essential to achieving a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons. It is also vital for making progress on other global challenges such as disaster risk reduction and mitigation, climate change and sustainable development.”
FILE – CTBTO – DECEMBER 2016, CROZET ISLAND, FRANCE, SOUTH ATLANTIC
24. Wide shot, sunset in installation of hydroacoustic station HA04
While the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) has created a worldwide monitoring network to verify compliance with the treaty banning nuclear testing, scientists are also now using its data for a wide range of other applications.
As the planet faces ever more challenges, such as dealing with climate change, CTBTO data has proven very useful in improving weather prediction - a very timely application with the third hottest June since records began to be kept.
One such use, for example, deals with monsoons, key to nations such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Lucrezia Terzi of the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre is using CTBTO data to analyse the incidence of the naturally occurring radioactive element Beryllium-7’s in the atmosphere.
By analyzing Beryllium-7 in the atmosphere going back for the past 15 years, she and her team hope to show that monsoons can be predicted up to 30 days in advance, which would allow farmers and governments to be better prepared for monsoon season, timing planting and harvesting accordingly, as well as saving lives and minimizing property damage.
In France, scientist Elisabeth Blanc of the ARISE project is using CTBTO data to understand better the upper atmosphere’s influence over weather and she hopes to be able to predict weather more accurately, even weeks in advance. She points out the lives lost in France’s heatwave of 2003, and underlines the importance of better weather predictions that would allow communities to be better prepared for such events in the future.
Lucrezia Terzi hopes other scientists will use the CTBTO data as well, and that this might encourage the few remaining holdout nations to ratify the nuclear-test-ban treaty. Work such as hers and Dr Blanc’s is actively contributing to worldwide efforts to improve food security and to mitigate natural disasters - in pursuit of achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo sees the Organization’s mission as combining the work of scientists and diplomats to ensure a safer and more sustainable world for all. He also believes that the applications beyond nuclear test monitoring provide an additional incentive to support the treaty and its Organization.
