AS NEWS reports continue to provide updates on the aftermath of Ondoy and the status of relief efforts, some of these stories also make comparisons between recent events and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina sweeping through the southern American city of New Orleans four years ago.

And as people continue to work toward getting back to their regular routines a task admittedly more challenging for some at this time those less severely affected by the storm may have trouble imagining the mental, emotional and physical tolls of having to leave one?s home and then either coming back to rebuild and restore the house or to settle elsewhere.

Many research groups have been studying the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina upon those it displaced, and perhaps reviewing some of the findings could provide information about future challenges so that countermeasures can start to be developed now.

Grades had suffered

One study, for example, follows several thousands of children displaced by Hurricane Katrina and found that their grades had suffered not just because of lost educational time and materials, but because their behaviors and attitudes had changed as a result of the stress. Maybe by working toward getting children out of evacuation centers and back to their homes as quickly as possible after Ondoy, similar long-term effects of this storm can be reduced in some fashion.

In discussing the aftermath of the flooding, one can?t avoid the rainfall that started the chain of events. Earlier this week it was reported that Ondoy poured more than a foot of water over the streets of Metro Manila in six hours, breaking a 42-year-old record.

It?s worth noting, though, that in the September 1 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology suggested more record-breaking rainfalls are coming as a result of global climate change.

Based on several model projections, they said, more rain is expected to fall in certain parts of the world, such as the deep tropics region closer to the equator, for example. The heavier rainfall is expected to increase by roughly 5 percent for every one degree Celsius rise in temperature.

Though the report is daunting, researchers caution that the modeling data for the tropical zones shouldn?t be considered the final word. Topical weather systems, they said, are usually smaller than they appear on the models being used. So to develop more accurate predictions, which could be useful for preparing emergency packs for natural disasters such as soil erosion and flooding caused by the heavy rain, the scientists are working on smaller-scale models of tropical regions.

Enhancing weather data

While the American scientists improve their climate models, Israeli researchers have found a way to enhance the weather data they collect by incorporating cell phone towers into their monitoring systems.

In the April 2009 issue of the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, a team from Tel Aviv University announced they?d found a way to combine rainfall measurements with atmospheric humidity measurements taken around cell phone towers to better predict the advent of the next big flood, allowing more time to prepare for the event.

The researchers said the equipment they?ve developed collects information on how the radio waves emitted by cell phone towers are affected by humidity, and can be implemented without too much difficulty. Since these towers can be located in remote or less accessible places, collecting data from their vicinities could lead to more accurate atmospheric measurements. And by collecting and analyzing data from these wireless communications systems, the researchers said, they could learn more about the global climate system and improve current weather prediction efforts.

E-mail the author at massie@massie.com.