Weather service for Games will be 'timely, accurate'
By Liang Chao (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-06-13 09:15
Chinese meteorological authorities promised on Monday, June 12, a timely and
accurate weather forecast service for the Beijing 2008 Olympics.
Qin
Dahe, top official of China Meteorological Administration (CMA), vowed in a
televised conference to provide a more accurate forecast in Beijing and Qingdao,
two host cities of the 2008 summer Olympics.
He said at least two
drillings would be launched to check all the preparations before the Games'
opening.
One will be held this July, and the next is scheduled
for next summer. "CMA will find out the best solutions to further
improve weather services and make sure what countermeasures can be taken to
deal with emergencies probably to be caused by extremely weather changes
during the games," he said.
In the month-long exercise in July,
priorities will be given to weather changes and consequences, with impacts
on the Games assessed, Qin said.
Meanwhile, early warning for disastrous
weather changes like hailstorm and heavy fog and measures to mitigate their
adverse impacts will be assessed during this drilling.
Qin said, to
ensure the success of the Games, meteorological authorities will monitor
weather and climate changes along with changes of local environment like
ultraviolet radiation and acid rain that may have affect them more or
less.
"During the drilling, we should have worked out precautionary
schemes against emergencies like communication problems caused by hackers or
blackout of power supply and consequent errors affecting forecasting system
operation," he said.
Relying on powerful supercomputers and a digital
radar network, a new comprehensive meteorological system is scheduled to perform
remote measurements and remote sensing automatically and continuously in Beijing
and Qingdao by then.
Many high-tech equipments are scheduled to be put
into full operation during the Beijing 2008 Olympics including Doppler radar
network and wind-profiler to monitor weather changes and climate tendency
towards bad weather, said Wang Bangzhong, deputy director of the Forecasting
Services and Disaster Mitigation Department of CMA.
He made it clear
that, with these networks and systems, they hope to secure "a seamless weather
forecast for the Beijing 2008 Olympics."
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