In the background of global warming, high impact tropical cyclone events occurred frequently and disasters got severer all over the world. In China, severe weather represented by landfalling typhoons is growing apparently. The landfalling typhoons tend to be more intense, and the number of severe landfalling typhoons is evidently increaseing. More landfalls are concentrated in a relatively short time, resulting in a significant decrease in the period of landfall activity. In this study, the characteristics of the typhoon induced disasters in China are analyzed; the status and problems of typhoon observations, forecasting and warning systems are discussed. Suggestions and measures of the improvement in the typhoon observation, forecasting and warning systems during the period of rapid development of social economy in China are proposed as well.
FY-3 is the second generation of Chinese poplar orbiting meteorological satellite with the capability of multi-spectral, three-dimensional and quantitatively global observation. As one of the most important space observation component of World Meteorological Organization, FY-3 satellites are playing key role in weather forecast, climate analysis, environmental management, disaster monitoring etc. The FY-3 ground segment has the capacity of global data acquisition in short latency. After data pre-processing and product generation, FY-3 data and products provide comprehensive service in the field of atmospheric sounding, ozone and radiation budget monitoring, data assimilation, climate application.
The brief introduction of history, status and development of weather modification is presented here. With development and progress of human civilization, the sensitivity and vulnerability to weather show an increasing trend. Since the creation of modern weather modification in 1946, the strong demands for water resource and relief of natural disaster induced by severe weather have promoted the rapid development of weather modification. The obvious advancement and development of science and technology of weather modification have been achieved in the past 60 years due to the increased understanding of natural weather process. The basic principle, application, status and key issues of science and technology, and development trend of weather modification are introduced and discussed in this paper.
The Tibetan Plateau, with the most prominent and complicated terrain on the globe and an elevation of more than 4 000 m on average above sea level, is often called the “Third Pole”. Due to its topographic character, the plateau surface absorbs a large amount of solar radiation energy (much of which is redistributed by cryospheric processes), and undergoes dramatic seasonal changes of surface heat and water fluxes. Like the Arctic and Antarctica, the Tibetan Plateau area is one of the most sensitive areas responding to global climate change due to its high altitude and the presence of permafrost and glaciers, which are most sensitive to global warming. The effective way to understand water-ice-air-ecosystem interactions over heterogeneous landscape of the Tibetan Plateau is to establish the comprehensive research stations over the different land surfaces of the Tibetan Plateau. With support from various agencies in the People’s Republic of China, the Tibetan Observation and Research Platform (TORP) is now implementing. Firstly, 5 comprehensive observation and research stations established by the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences，are introduced. Then the preliminary observational results are shown in the paper. Finally, the difficulty in observation and study of water-ice-air-ecosystem interactions of the Tibetan Plateau and the possible solutions are presented.
China is a country which has many severe meteorological disasters. Southwest China vortex is an important severe weather system, closely related with the rainstorm flooding in summer half year in China. It has many influences on the national economy, social developmemt, life and property safety of the people. Based on the situation of scientific research and field experiment on Southwest China vortex, this paper gives out the importance of the observational basis with Southwest China vortex atmospheric scientific experiment for the basic data, scientific research and operational forecasting of Southwest China vortex. The design principle and technological way for the observing layout of Southwest China vortex atmospheric scientific experiment from the aspects of the network distribution, equipment level and observational element are proposed. According to this, the observing layout engineering of Southwest China vortex atmospheric scientific experiment is systematically designed. And the main advance was briefly reviewed for the two Southwest China vortex atmospheric scientific experiments in the summer of 2010 and 2011, and from this, the validity was emphasized for the observing design-layout of Southwest China vortex atmospheric scientific experiment, which made progress on the research and operation of Southwest China vortex. Finally, from the needs, present and effect of Southwest China vortex atmospheric scientific experiment,it further points out the importance of strengthing the observing design-layout research and practice for the development of social economy and reducing disaster in China.
The global/regional assimilation and prediction system of a new generation developed by China Meteorological Administration（CMA）was introduced. The main characteristics of the system were discussed, such as full compressible and hydrostatic/non-hydrostatic approximation in option, global/regional unified model, semi implicit-semi Lagrange decretization scheme, standardization, modularization and parallelization of the model software, etc. GRAPES has been applied in national and regional meteorological centers, universities and research institutes.
The definitions of extreme weather/climate events and "climate extreme" are discussed in the paper. On the basis of classifying the extreme events into four categories (namely extremes caused by variations in a single variable, events related to weather phenomena,compound events and climate extremes), the related extreme indices as well as their trends and corresponding impacts under the background of global warming are summarized. The results showed that intense precipitation events over mid-lower reaches of the Yangtze River tend to be more frequent. Heat waves in eastern China are stronger and drought trend in northeast China and northern China, especially at the end of 20th century and at the beginning of 21 century, is increasing. Furthermore, drought events are frequent in southwest China over recent ten years. In order to minimize losses caused by the increasing meteorological disasters, it is extraordinary essential to strengthen the capability in monitoring and warning of high-impact extremes. Meanwhile, it is also necessary to strengthen engineering defense measures based on changes in extreme events to prevent flash floods and urban waterlogged disasters induced by intense precipitation as well as droughts and heat waves associated with insufficient precipitation.
The relationships among reflectivity, velocity and spectrum width of stratiform cloud are simulated, and the availability of cloud radar data are analyzed. The reflectivity, velocity and spectrum width observed by cloud radar in vertical observation model are used to retrieve the liquid water content and the size distribution in stratiform cloud under the assumption of neglecting the air vertical speed and turbulence. The results show that the relationships among reflectivity, velocity and spectrum width observed by 8 mm cloud radar are similar to simulated values. The mean drop size, toll drop number and liquid water contend have obvious variations from cloud top to reflectivity center. The increase of reflectivity is due to the increase of drop size. The microphysical parameters retrieved by cloud radar have similar range with that by aircraft.
The polar regions are located in the north and south ends on the earth, which are the key areas of global change research. To understand global change, especially the global climate change, it is needed to research on polar atmosphere. Chinese Arctic and Antarctic of scientific investigation started in 80s and 90s of last century. As a national action, by the end of 2011, 28 times Antarctic expeditions and 8 times Antarctic inland expeditions, and 4 time Arctic expeditions were organized. 3 Antarctic bases (Great Wall, Zhongshan and Kunlun) and 1 Arctic base (Yellow River) and 6 automatic weather stations were established. Formed by the manual weather station, automatic weather station and weather observation on the “Xuelong” icebreaker vessel as the main platform of the polar expedition of hardware support system. Chinese polar atmospheric science observation system is gradually formed including the meteorological operational observation and short term investigation study. Chinese polar meteorological expedition and research work has made great progress by the efforts near 30 years.
The impact of drought on crop growth and development are introduced, and an overview of the main engineering’s measures of the agricultural disaster prevention and mitigation, these projects include: watershed harvest engineering, water storage engineering, mulching for reducing evaporation engineering, water-saving irrigation engineering, artificial rainfall anti-drought engineering, drought resistant seed coating engineering, and the application effects of t these engineering are also described.
Evident change in climate of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau occurred in the past half century. Surface air temperature significantly increased, and annual and summer precipitation rose in most parts of the plateau. The change in climate has in some extent affected the human and natural systems. Expected warming in the coming decades will have complicated impacts on glacial, frozen ground, hydro-cycle, ecosystems, agricultural production, energy climatic resources, transportation, hydro-engineering projects and inhabitant environment. It is therefore necessary, in such areas as the construction of large engineering projects, to plan for cost-benefit adaptation to climate change. A framework of adaptation measures for different fields of engineering construction is discussed in this paper.
In order to develop and utilize the wind energy resource efficiently, and realize the target of stepping from a big wind energy country into a strong wind energy country, this paper summarizes the application status, problems and impacts on project benefits in various aspects of meteorological technology application in wind energy exploiting based on a large number of past projects practice, data analysis and test results. Furthermore, based on the analysis of atmospheric science principles and the special needs of wind power to meteorological technology, it is pointed out the key technical issues and direction should be noted in the applying process of wind energy assessment, numerical simulation and numerical prediction technology.
A China-Japan cooperative JICA (Japan international cooperation agency) project on monitoring the Tibetan plateau atmosphere (JICA/Tibet Project) was implemented from 2005 to 2009. Over the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding region, the JICA/Tibet Project set up a comprehensive atmospheric observing system, including the GPS water vapor observations, the observations of radio soundings, automatic weather stations (AWSs), wind profilers, planetary boundary layer (PBL) observing system and water surface observing system, as well as the satellite remote sensing observations. The implementation of the JICA/Tibet Project not only enhances greatly the capability on monitoring the plateau atmosphere and collecting the meteorological data, but also raises both quality and quantity of the atmospheric observing data over the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding region. In the JICA/Tibet Project, the severe weather early warning and forecasting platform were set up and applied to the routine meteorological operations. The comprehensive three-dimension atmospheric observing system over the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding region built by the JICA/Tibet Project has important values not only for the scientific researches on the weather and climate over the Tibetan Plateau and their impacts, but also for the real application in preventing and reducing meteorological disasters through raising capabilities of monitoring, warning and predicting disastrous weather and climate.