China's self-developed marine forecast model "Mazu" has been applied to provide services for the sailing competitions of the ongoing 19th Asian Games with enhanced precision to improve accuracy and efficiency.

The 19th Asian Games kicked off on Saturday evening with a spectacular opening ceremony in Hangzhou City, east China's Zhejiang Province where more than 12,000 athletes from 45 countries and regions in Asia are competing in 40 sports, 61 disciplines, and 481 events.

This year's Games is co-hosted by Hangzhou and five other cities in Zhejiang Province. In Ningbo City, one of the co-host cities, Xiangshan Sailing Center serves as the competition and training venue for sailing during the Games, facilitated by the improved "Mazu" numerical marine forecast model, which is self-developed by the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center (NMEFC) under the Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources.

The sea area of the sailing center has been divided into four parts for sailing competitions, each with a diameter of 1.5 nautical miles. In order to improve the accuracy of marine forecast, the NMEFC has included the entire East China Sea in its scope for forecast of ocean currents and waves, raised the resolution in the water area for competitions to 20 meters, and provided five-day hourly numerical forecast data covering ocean waves and currents as well as sea surface temperatures.

Data collected by the buoys, ground-wave radars and other equipment for ocean observations will be processed and analyzed, and the results will be sent to the sailing center where coaches will make tactical adjustments accordingly.

"The wave buoy self-developed by China is capable of observing ocean wave spectra and further separating the data of the wind waves and swells, which helps optimize our forecast results, so as to provide high precision information to the sailors on the swells that they care about most in a competition," said Wang Bin, the deputy director of Marine Environment Protection Technology Department of Chinese National Ocean Technology Center.

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