A NATIONAL competition to help Singapore students understand how daily weather affects the long-term climate change was launched on Thursday.

The winners of the National Weather Study Project (NWSP) 2009 will get to go overseas and gain insights into the global nature of climate change and the need for international collaboration to tackle it.

For the competition, organised by Senoko Power, participating schools are equipped with a mini-weather station to measure and analyse wind speed and direction, humidity, rainfall, temperature as well as solar intensity.

The students are given projects pertaining to the study of the local climate conditions and weather phenomena, which they will work on from January to March next year.

Launching the competition on Thursday, Mr Masagos Zulkifli, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Education, said climate change is one of the top global concerns today, alongside rising oil prices and inflation.

Singapore cannot isolate itself from the global movement in slowing climate change.

'The only way we can do this is to educate present and future generations of Singaporeans on environmental issues. Knowledge will empower our people with the ability to make climate-friendly choices,' he said.

The competition, designed to get students thinking about meteorological issues, is an ideal platform to educate students on climate change - 'a highly complex issue that encompasses fields such as physics, chemistry, biology, economics, sociology and much more,' added Mr Masagos.