TYPHOON Rosing? Typhoon Pepang? These Tagalog code names for Angela and Zack which battered the Philippines last week have become the latest weapons in a campaign to force Manila to 'internationalise' its typhoon names in line with other countries.
'The names are confusing, and are downright dangerous in the case of airline pilots who are already groping with English and Tagalog as a foreign language,' local observers said.
'The Philippines is the only country in the world that uses local code names. If all the countries in the Caribbean adopted a similar measure, just imagine how confusing it would be if a hurricane swept through the various islands of the east and west Caribbean on its way to the United States?' The practice of giving Tagalog code names to typhoons crossing the Philippines was started by the Philippine Atmosphere, Geophysical and Astronomical Service Administration in the mid-1960s, shortly after Ferdinand Marcos became president.
It is confusing not only to airline pilots, but also to international shipping crews plying the Pacific Ocean who monitor both the administration and the Guam Typhoon Warning Centre forecasts, the observers said.
The administration's forecasts, which are based on a civilian satellite tracking system, are often slightly different from the Guam updates, which are gleaned from the military weather tracking system.
The margin of difference is compounded when both weather stations use different code names for the same typhoon, the observers said.