The full view of the Arctic Village National Basic Meteorological Station, located in Mohe City, Heilongjiang Province. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Tao

  In Guojiawan Village, Yayu Township, Yuping Dong Autonomous County, Tongren City, Guizhou Province, meteorological technicians are maintaining high-standard farmland meteorological observation stations. Photo by Hu Panxue (Photo by the People)

  At the Three Gorges National Climate Observatory located in Yichang City, Hubei Province, technicians deployed meteorological balloons that were equipped with Beidou satellite navigation sounding and L-band sounding, and officially began parallel comparison observation of Beidou sounding. Photo by Yi Huangpeng

  Last year, many disasters such as high temperature heat waves, droughts, heavy rains and floods, typhoons/hurricanes and forest wildfires occurred around the world. Against the backdrop of global climate warming, extreme weather and climate events occur frequently, and people's attention to climate change is increasing.

  For China, it has an important "weapon" to deal with various extreme weather and climate events - the world's largest comprehensive meteorological observation system, closely monitor changes in wind, frost, rain and snow, and fully support increasingly accurate meteorological forecasting and early warning, build a solid first line of defense for meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation, and serve all industries to reduce losses and increase efficiency.

  Real-time "scan" the changes in the wind and clouds from space, high altitude and land

  At 7:15 on January 1 this year, a balloon carrying the Beidou satellite navigation spike successfully launched at the Xilinhot High-altitude Observation Station in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Half an hour later, the first set of sounding data was uploaded to the meteorological big data cloud platform "Tianqing" for use in various domestic meteorological services. This is the first time that Beidou sounding business data has been applied to high-altitude benchmark climate observations.

  Beidou sounding system is a sounding observation technology independently developed by China. It breaks through the traditional sounding observation mode and can carry out three-stage sounding observations of "rise-flat drift-falling" and adopts the "cloud + end" data transmission mode based on the ground-space Internet of Things to realize sounding observation and forecasting interaction.

  "Compared with the current L-band business, it uses Beidou navigation and positioning technology, and its positioning accuracy reaches the international advanced level. The wind measurement error has increased from a few meters/second to a few meters/second, which is equivalent to an order of magnitude." Guo Qiyun, a senior researcher at the Meteorological Detection Center of the China Meteorological Administration, introduced.

  In June 2023, the China Meteorological Administration issued a work plan for upgrading the meteorological sounding business system, gradually upgrading the sounding system of 120 high-altitude stations across the country. By benchmarking against the global advanced level and achieving independent and controllable technology, China has gradually become a major balloon high-meteorological observation business, effectively improving China's high-meteorological observation capabilities and remote sensing observation capabilities of wind and cloud meteorological satellites, improving the quality of numerical forecasts, and providing strong support for improving the accuracy of meteorological forecasts.

  In 2024, when Typhoon "Pabian" approached China, the 48-hour typhoon path forecast of the Guangdong Provincial Meteorological Bureau showed that with the help of Beidou sounding data, the error was reduced from 94 kilometers to 38 kilometers.

  In addition to the Beidou sounding system, China also has high-precision observation equipment such as wind and cloud meteorological satellites, weather radars, and large meteorological detection drones, which observe the changes in wind, frost, rain and snow on the earth in real time from space, high altitude, land, and sea surface. Data from the China Meteorological Administration shows that 8 in-orbit storm and cloud meteorological satellites, 546 weather radars, and more than 90,000 ground meteorological observation stations form the world's largest three-dimensional integrated meteorological observation system. China has become the only country that has dawn, morning, afternoon and precipitation measurement satellites at the same time, with a meteorological disaster monitoring rate of 80%.

  At the same time, the meteorological department was the first to conduct observations of greenhouse gases in China. There were 9 national atmospheric background stations and 66 high-precision greenhouse gas observation stations for business access, and a national greenhouse gas observation network was built, producing the world-renowned "Wariguan curve", fully supporting the scientific research and governance of global climate change.

  The "call response" system builds a solid first line of defense for meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation

  From July 8 to 14 last year, heavy rainstorms occurred in most areas of Chongqing, and local heavy rainstorms. 103,000 people were transferred and resettled in the city for emergency risk avoidance. Among them, Zhong County implemented progressive forecast and early warning services, launched forward-looking dispatching and command in advance, successfully warned and dealt with 9 local disasters and hazards, and transferred 6,981 people to avoid dangers in advance; Yunyang County Meteorological Bureau carried out "31620" digital progressive warning services and timely "call" services, helping Ping'an Town quickly organize 14 households and 23 people to evacuate overnight 4 hours before the occurrence of a large-scale rock landslide.

  An important reason for the success of Chongqing's disaster prevention and mitigation is the implementation of the "31620" progressive meteorological service, a multi-department coordination mechanism led by meteorological early warning, and a mechanism for timely response at four levels of cities, districts, counties, towns, streets, villages and communities/grids. The "31620" progressive meteorological service is to release important meteorological information reports three days before the disaster weather, release daily meteorological news 1 day in advance, issue meteorological warning/warning signals 6 hours in advance, issue meteorological alarm 2 hours in advance, and carry out rainfall notifications in "0 hours".

  The continuously woven meteorological observation system that supports progressive meteorological services and linkage response mechanisms is the constantly woven meteorological observation system. In Chongqing, in addition to Fengyun satellites and ground observation stations, the altitude coverage rate of weather radar 1 kilometer from the ground has exceeded 95%, fully supporting the continuous improvement of the accuracy of Chongqing's meteorological forecast. At present, the spatial resolution of 0 to 2-hour heavy rainfall forecasts integrated by Chongqing has reached 500 meters, and the time resolution is only 5 minutes.

  Supported by the meteorological observation system, China's meteorological department insists on innovation-driven development and benchmarks against world-class standards. At present, the numerical forecasting model of meteorological "chip" has achieved a major transformation from introduction and absorption to independent research and development. Some performance indicators of the three artificial intelligence meteorological forecasting models of Fengqing, Fenglei and Fengshun have reached the international advanced level. The spatial resolution of the intelligent grid weather forecast system is accurate to 5 kilometers across the country, and can accurately predict regional heavy rains, high temperatures and cold waves 3 days in advance. The accuracy rate of heavy rain warning reaches 93%, and the advance volume of strong convection warning reaches 43 minutes. The average error of the 24-hour path forecast of the typhoon is 62 kilometers, maintaining the world's advanced level.

  At present, progressive meteorological service mechanisms and high-level early warning "response" system have been established across the country, and meteorological impact forecasts and risk warnings are carried out in many industries such as agriculture, transportation, and tourism, as well as in many scenarios such as mountain torrents and geological disasters, floods in small and medium-sized rivers, forest fire dangers, urban rainstorms and floods. A national emergency warning information release system has been built that gathers 16 industries and 82 types of warning information. The warning information can be delivered to relevant responsible persons of the government, departments and industries within 1 minute, and the public coverage rate of early warning information reaches 99.1%. In 2024, there were 340,000 main leaders of party committees, governments and emergency management departments at all levels across the country throughout the year, effectively building a solid first line of defense for meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation.

  Helping many countries to cope with climate change

  In the demonstration field of the Meteorological Science and Technology Courtyard of Wangdatang Village, Xiongzhai Town, Zhengyang County, Henan Province, the 5G meteorological automatic observation station is linked to the intelligent irrigation system, and the peanut seedlings in the test field have achieved "automatic drinking of water when thirsty and active cooling when hot." Not only that, satellite remote sensing monitors soil moisture in real time, drones shuttle through the fields to capture crop growth, and IoT devices collect temperature, humidity, light and other data into a comprehensive "barometer" for peanut growth.

  "In the past, peanuts were prone to rot when they were low temperatures. Now with these meteorological equipment, we can not only understand the ground temperature in advance and decide whether it is the seed, but also provide scientific guidance throughout the growth process of peanuts." Lao Li, a grower in Wangdatang Village, said, pointing to the meteorological monitoring equipment beside the field. In 2024, Zhengyang peanut growers, according to the guidance of experts from the small courtyard, had their income increased by 10% compared with the previous one.

  In the past, agricultural production "rely on the heavens to make a living". With meteorological services, it achieved "knowing the heavens and working". At present, all townships across the country have achieved full coverage of automatic meteorological stations, and full-chain accompanying meteorological services are provided for the entire agricultural production process. The risk warning service for dry and hot wind in winter wheat in 2024 has achieved remarkable results, helping winter wheat to reduce disasters and increase revenue by 3 billion jin.

  Today, meteorology not only provides the public with location and scenario-based meteorological forecasting services and characteristic life meteorological service index, but also provides services to more than 70 industries, including agriculture, empowering industry development.

  During this year's Qingming Festival holiday, rape flowers in Wuyuan, Jiangxi are rarely intertwined with flowers such as camellia and azalea. Wuyuan Meteorological Department has launched a forecast of the flowering period meteorological index in advance, accurately pushing information such as flowering rate, morning fog probability, precipitation period, etc., so that tourists can enjoy flowers "foreseeable" and tourists can arrange their itineraries reasonably.

  Watch the sunrise, the sea of ​​clouds, the rime, the aurora, blue tears, the city landscape... With the support of fine meteorological services, many local cultural and tourism industries have flourished.

  In the fields of marine, transportation, energy, finance and other industries, the meteorological department is fully committed to providing services and guarantees, and cooperates across departments to empower and increase efficiency for industry development. We have jointly carried out 341 high-impact sections of severe weather, and the number of traffic accidents caused by severe weather has decreased by 50% year-on-year; we have provided energy supply-saving meteorological services to 81 departments and enterprises, forming wind energy solar monitoring and evaluation products with a spatial resolution of 1 kilometer and a time resolution of hour by hour, and wind power and photovoltaic forecast products have been applied in more than 1,300 new energy power plant stations; we have jointly explored the "meteorology × finance" service model and formed a key innovation team for financial meteorology. More than 70 financial meteorological indexes have been released.

  In addition to serving domestic economic and social development, in recent years, with the support of a strong meteorological observation system, China's global meteorological monitoring, global forecasting and global service capabilities have also been continuously improving. Meteorological services have been continuously accelerating the pace of serving the world, helping many countries improve their ability to respond to climate change.

  As of April 2025, Fengyun Meteorological Satellite has provided services to 133 countries and regions, with international user satisfaction reaching 82%. China's early warning practices benefit the world, jointly building an early warning business platform for meteorological early warning is included in the 2024 China-Africa Cooperation Forum Green Development Partner Action, and the "Action Plan for Early Warning to Promote Climate Change Adaptation to China (2025-2027)" was released in November last year. At present, China's independently developed "cloud + end" meteorological early warning business system has been applied in Pakistan, Ethiopia, the Solomon Islands and other countries.

  Early meteorological warnings have been highly recognized by the international community. In February this year, after conducting a survey on the early meteorological warning practices in many places in Zhejiang, Shanghai, Chongqing and Guangdong, Co Barrett, Deputy Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, believes: "China's advanced meteorological forecasting and early warning practice experience and advanced meteorological forecasting and early warning system are worth promoting among members of the World Meteorological Organization." She said that China's practical experience in the construction of early warning mechanisms and capacity improvement has provided a demonstration for the world. (Li Hongmei)

[Editor in charge: Zhang Qiaosu]