Temperature Index launched to hedge against weather and climate risks

China's National Meteorological Information Center (NMIC) and Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange officially launched a jointly developed Temperature Index on Monday. The index aims to hedge against weather and climate risks in agriculture and energy sectors, while enhancing risk management in the financial markets.

According to the NMIC, the Temperature Index is built on a national-level platform and oriented towards the needs of the real economy. The index integrates high-resolution temperature observation data, historical electricity consumption records and financial market demands.

The index uses hourly temperature change data and traces it back to 1991, setting differentiated benchmark temperatures for cooling and heating degree-time indices.

The Temperature Index had begun trial operations since September 2024 across 53 benchmark locations in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

Currently, the Temperature Index has established a standardized temperature index processing system based on the meteorological big data cloud platform "Tianqing."  It is a full-process monitoring system based on the comprehensive meteorological business real-time monitoring system "Tianjing." The China Meteorological Data Network is also factored in by the index. It publishes six sub-indices in real-time, including daily average temperature index, cooling index and heating index.

(Cover via CFP)