Climate Exchange

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China’s climate prediction services

Beijing Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration, China

hina has a large territory with diverse landforms, and it is

exposed to the impacts of various meteorological disasters

including heavy rain-induced flash floods and geological

disasters, droughts, typhoons, frosts, cold temperature, wind,

hailstones, heavy fog, and sand and dust storms. In the context

of global warming, the higher frequency and greater intensity of

extreme events has caused mounting losses from meteorologi-

cal hazards and secondary disasters as China faces increasingly

higher disaster risks. In 2010 and 2011, the economic losses

caused by meteorological disasters were more than CNY500 and

CNY300 billion respectively, and both were higher than normal.

China is located in the East Asia monsoon zone. Being subject to the

impacts of the monsoon, the winter in China is relatively dry and its

summer has abundant precipitation as the main rainy season in the

year. Abnormal precipitation may lead to frequent meteorological

hazards and secondary disasters. As the main rainfall areas can vary

largely from year to year, droughts and floods can have different

impacts on different regions. Bearing this in mind, it is particularly

necessary to make precipitation predictions for the flood-prone

season each year, which serve as important information in support

of disaster prevention, preparedness and mitigation. On the other

hand, China’s agriculture is an important foundation of its national

economy, and climate predictions are closely related to agricultural

services. This linkage also determines the necessity for

making climate predictions in China.

Climate prediction services

Climate prediction services involve almost all aspects

of meteorological hazards, and most prominently

floods and droughts. During a flood-prone season, the

first question to be addressed is whether or not severe

floods are likely to occur in China’s major river basins,

and this is the focus of the flood predictions. The major

customers of these specific basin-wide flood predic-

tions are water resource and hydropower authorities.

These predictions allow them to prepare for potential

floods, and provide science-based information that

will enable them to schedule their water- and electric-

ity-related activities.

China’s climate prediction services pay close atten-

tion to agriculture, with predictions closely linked

to the processes of spring sowing, summer planting,

autumn sowing and frost prevention. In summer,

drought prediction mainly addresses questions of

whether or not significant droughts are likely to occur

in China’s major grain producing areas. As the occur-

rence of low temperature episodes or persistent cold

apacity

evelopment

Source: BCC

The summer rainfall anomaly percentage in 2008: forecast (left) and observations (right)