Chinese can expect more meteorological bureaus alerts this year amidst the country's intensified battle against adverse weather and its efforts to improve services for the upcoming Beijing Olympics, a senior meteorological official said here on Friday.
Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), identified weather forecast services for the 17-day Olympiad opening on Aug. 8 as "a priority" for 2008 as the country may face much more frequent adverse weather.
The priority of the priorities, he said, would go to short-range forecasts and now cast services for the Games' opening and closing ceremonies, tests on rain making and precipitation redistribution, the presentation of the Olympic torch on Mount Qomolangma, the torch relay and the successful run of all the events.
"We can't be 100 percent precise in weather forecasts," Zheng said on the sidelines of a conference that opened on Friday to deliberate upon the year's meteorological work. "But we will go all out to reduce uncertainties and provide more specific services for the public, volunteers and athletes to stay on top of bad weather."
August is Beijing's rainy season when there is precipitation usually every two or three days. It is often coupled with thunder and lightening. Compared with host cities of the previous four Olympiads, China's capital may have the most rainy days.
The International Olympic Committee, however, is requiring Beijing to continuously upgrade weather forecasts every few hours and pin them down to specific Olympic venues.
Wu Zhenghua, a Beijing Meteorological Bureau researcher, called the requirement "very demanding". But he appeared confident the goal would be achieved.
Since 2006, the meteorological departments had launched two national Olympic drills while upgrading the country's weather monitoring and data processing systems.
A dozen meteorological experts from seven countries and regions, including Australia and the United States, will come to Beijing, together with a line-up of the country's 30 best meteorologists, to provide Olympic weather forecasts to be released every three to six hours.
A Climate Change Center is currently being installed by the CMA to integrate domestic research and development resources to secure a better understanding on the frequency, intensity, geographical distribution and changing patterns of adverse weather.
Inclement weather under close watch for the Olympics, Zheng noted, included high temperature, high humidity, torrential rains, thunder and lightning, hale, gale, typhoons, fog and smog.
The National Meteorological Center, the country's nerve center for weather forecasts, will share its information with all other cities co-hosting the Olympics with Beijing. These include Qinhuangdao, Qingdao, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenyang.
To strengthen meteorological observation, China also planned to complete the construction of 18 new-generation weather radar systems and an up-to-date upper-level sounding system this year. Upgrades for the ground system for Fengyun 01 and Fengyun 06 weather satellites will also be further advanced. A ground receiving station network will be put into place to cover satellite data across the world.
Zheng said China's weather forecast accuracies have been rising, with the 24-hour forecasts for rain or not advancing 2.1 percent last year from the world-leading 83 percent in 2006. For torrential rain forecasts the figure was up 1.9 percent from 2006 to 22.61 percent last year, roughly the same as in the United States.
Last year, the warmest in China for 57 years, the average temperature was 10.6 degrees Celsius. With the warmer temperatures came tougher fights with typhoons, heavy snow, floods, drought, torrential rains and gales. The death toll from weather, however, was 567 people fewer than the previous year, CMA figures revealed.
Zheng attributed the results to rising public consciousness over adverse weather and the timelier alarms and alerts covering broader areas.
Last year, domestic meteorological departments rang alarm bells776 times for foul weather, issued alerts of various classes of weather 3,350 times and sent 1.2 billion short-messages to cell phone users last year.
Currently more than 600,000 people, mostly at the forefront of combating against adverse weather including a disaster relief crew, have daily access to free cell-phone messages, CMA sources said.
During the combat against Super Typhoon Sepat alone, up to 83.35 million prevention alerts were sent out in short messages to residents of Fujian, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Hunan provinces.
The eight typhoons, including Sepat, killed 76 last year, the fewest on record, Zheng noted.
A separate report released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs showed natural disasters, mostly flooding, mud-rock flows, caused 2,325 deaths last year, down 27 percent from an eight-year high of3,186 in 2006.
A thorny issue facing China's combat against extreme weather as the participants, mostly chiefs of local weather bureaus, noted at the two-day conference that "many alerts fell short of their targets". This was because of inconsistent communication flow or the lack of prevention know-how.
"To prevent alerts from becoming a spent bullet, we must explore more channels to alert more people and faster," said Jiao Meiyan, the CMA spokesperson. "Also, we need to prepare the public with self-protection knowledge and skills."
Apart from street billboards, telephone hot lines, cell phone short messages and rural cable broadcasting, the CMA also planned to push the use of an advanced satellite broadcasting system and to get omnipresent by using the local network of the ministries of education, construction, railway, agriculture and public facilities, such as buses and trains.
After lightning strikes killed 141 people in July alone, for instance, the CMA and the Ministry of Education sent popular science discs and wall maps in an emergency action to 425,000 primary and junior high schools. The deaths caused by the lightning numbered 581 last year, up 30 percent from 2006.
Despite the challenges ahead, the CMA's Zheng said domestic meteorological work had received unprecedented attention and ushered in its best period in history. This was partly due to the rising global concern with climate changes and the country's growing economy.
CMA figures showed meteorological work had seen "evident rises" in the capital input from local governments last year, with even the financially-strained Baota District of Yan'an city of northwestern Shaanxi Province, the old revolutionary base, channeling more than one million yuan, a rise of 11.8 percent from the previous year.
When Sichuan and Anhui were ravaged by drought last year, meteorological staff were called into the offices of provincial leaders many times to deliberate upon the plans of rain making.
Nationwide, some three million square kilometers benefited from artificial rainfall last year. Another 450,000 square kilometers were successfully sheltered from hail attacks.
Source:Xinhua
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