China advances in weather forecasting, disaster warning

The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) said on Monday that major progress has been made over the past five years in the country's meteorological services, including substantial progress in weather forecasting accuracy and disaster prevention capabilities.

Song Shanyun, deputy administrator of the CMA, said at a press briefing in Beijing that improvement in the services spanned multiple areas, including disaster prevention, agricultural support and technological innovation.

According to Song, China has built the world's largest modern integrated meteorological observation system, with the national meteorological disaster monitoring rate reaching 80 percent.

China has also become the world's only country to simultaneously operate civilian meteorological satellites at dawn, morning, afternoon, and inclined near-Earth orbits.

A global intelligent forecasting system capable of hourly weather forecasts a day in advance and predicting major national weather events 15 days in advance has been constructed.

Song said China provides meteorological satellite data and services to 132 countries and regions worldwide. In the past five years, 35 bilateral cooperation agreements have been signed in the field.

He said China has been deeply involved in global meteorological governance and is steadfast in promoting multi-level international meteorological science and technology cooperation.

Compared with 2019, experts say weather forecasting has become more precise.

Zhang Hongguang, deputy head of the forecasting department at the CMA, said the warning time for severe convective weather has reached 43 minutes, a 13.2 percent improvement compared to five years ago. The accuracy rate of 24-hour heavy rainfall forecasts has also increased by 4.9 percent compared to five years ago.

(Cover: A Feng Yun satellite image. /CMA)