|
|
|||||||
 |
|||||||
|
A Brief Introduction to the Shaanxi ProvincialMeteorological Bureau 1.General Information of the Province Shaanxi Province is located in the very heart of China, boasting a population of more than 35 million in an area of over 205,600 square kilometers (about 77,225 square miles). Shaanxi includes most of the middle stretch of the Yellow River and it borders the provinces of Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Henan, Hubei, Sichuan, Gansu and Ningxia. Shaanxi Province’s climate is temperate and semi-arid in the north and subtropical and humid in the south. The Annual average temperature of Shaanxi is between 8C and 16C and its annual rainfall averages from between 400 millimeters to 1000 millimeters. 2. General Information about the Shaanxi Provincial Meteorological Bureau The Shaanxi Provincial Meteorological Bureau was founded in 1953. There are 9 executive divisions in the provincial bureau, 10 Affiliations, 10 regional bureaus and 98 county weather stations that are affiliated with the Provincial Meteorological Bureau. At present there are 11 provincial and regional observatories in the whole province. The total staff size of the Bureau is 1,940 persons. After 50 years’ of effort, especially in the past 20 years’ since the Chinese open-door policy construction and development of the Shaanxi Provincial Meteorological Bureau has established a meteorological monitoring system with a practical operational distribution of resources, including surface observation, upper-air observation, weather radar, satellite monitoring and specialized meteorological observation. Now the Shaanxi Provincial Meteorological Observatory is the center of the computer meteorological information network and telecommunications system, which connects with the National Meteorological Center, the Lanzhou Regional Meteorological Center, the prefecture meteorological observatories and the county weather stations of the province. It has established an information processing system service, including weather forecasts and warnings, climate analysis applications and forecasts, agro-meteorology, weather modifications and satellite remote sensing. The meteorological services of the Shaanxi Provincial Meteorological Bureau are a comprehensive meteorological system for decision-making, public service, special meteorological services and dedicated meteorological services. The focus of the Bureau’s meteorological services has been concentrated to short term climate forecasts, medium and long term weather forecasts, special weather forecasts, agro-meteorological services, crop production forecasts, agro-climate data exploration and applications, and weather modification and lightning prevention services. The Bureau’s meteorological services play a very important role for the economic and social development of Shaanxi province. 3. The major weather forecast services 1. Weather Forecasting and Disaster Warning These are the Bureau’s major meteorological services. The Shaanxi Provincial Meteorological Bureau implements the weather forecasting service which is delivered by the medium of radio, Television, newspapers and the internet etc. In recent years, we have offered the weather forecast services from an automatic “121” telephone information system service, and audio-video TV weather forecasting programs. We also provide weather forecasting services for some scenic locations, telecommunication companies, key projects, air pollution forecasts in cities, and important events that are held in Shaanxi province. The Bureau’s meteorological service has accurately provided the weather forecasting services for President Clinton`s short visit in Xi`an and the Fourth National Tournament. Shaanxi Provincial Meteorological Bureau also explores a wide range of other weather forecast services, such as the index of health and body temperatures, and indexes for dressing, morning exercises, blood vascular accident, bronchial asthma and so on. Since 1 June 2002, the time interval of short term weather forecast lasts from 48 hours to 72 hours. 2. Decision-Making Services Natural disasters of drought, floods, hail, and geological disasters of urban environment and soil erosion happen frequently in Shaanxi province, Because of this the Shaanxi Provincial Meteorological Bureau actively provides various timely and proper meteorological services to the local government. The weather forecasts of long lasting high temperatures over a wide range, the rainstorm in Northern Shaanxi in 1997 and rainstorms in 1998 in southern Shaanxi province (Zi chang county) , especially the Shangluo region were predicted accurately by the Bureau. In 2002, the June 8th and “June 23rd” rainstorms in southern Shaanxi and July 4th rainstorm in northern Shaanxi (Zichang)“ were also predicted timely and precisely by the Bureau. The Bureau’s meteorological services have contributed greatly to the mitigation and preparedness of our province to natural disasters. 4. Provide Ecological Environment Service for Local Government and Overall Services for Agro-economic Crop Shaanxi province is a large agriculture province. In order to meet the needs of the agro-meteorological services of the province, the Bureau’s meteorological operations provide weather forecasting services for the harvest and the flood seasons and for the economic crops. The accuracy of the summer and autumn crop production forecasting services to the local government is proximate to 95 percent, making a great contribution to the crop production forecasting service for the government. The periodical “Shaanxi climate and Agriculture Information” and “Economic crop and meteorology” edited by the Provincial Meteorological Observatory and the Provincial Economic Crop Observatory, respectively are favored by the local government. According to the great needs of northwest development and ecological construction, Shaanxi Provincial Meteorological Bureau has established a working group team for the management of ecological construction in the province. The remote sensing techniques have been applied to monitor the dynamic vegetation of the whole province, which greatly helps the promotion of regional vegetation distribution. The remote sensing image processing system, geological information system and “3S” technique have also applied to the background investigations and practical research of the Shaanxi ecological environment. The remote sensing ecological environment background investigation, dynamic monitoring and vegetation distribution have been implemented gradually, according to the provincial geographical locations and the elements of ecological environment of the system. The above-mentioned scientific results in important evidence for the management of ecological distribution of northern Shaanxi province, such as returning the farm land to grass land, etc. and the engineering of construction in the province. The research has been evaluated at the international level by the expert team of CMA. 5. Weather Modification by Aircrafts Shaanxi has a drought season and the drought has been the bottleneck for the development of our provincial agriculture products. Weather Modification and hail dispersion by aircraft, artillery and rockets and the experiments of fog dispersion have been actively implemented in the province. Since 1996, we have carried out weather modification by aircraft 245 times the coverage of the operation has reached 240.4 sq.km, affecting almost all the counties of the province. Artificial rain precipitation has been increased by 58 tons by the weather modification activities, which caused an economic benefit of 5.8 billion Yuan. The above-mentioned activities reduced 21.7 billion Yuan of economic losses. Since 2000, the weather modification operation has been deployed from one aircraft being for certain periods of the year, to two aircraft being used at the same time for the remainder of the year. The implementation of Bureau’s weather modification services in our province has provided relief for several natural disasters including draught and hail. 6. Thunder Prevention Meteorological Service In recent years, Shaanxi provincial meteorological bureau has offered a large amount of financial support and techniques to the lightning prevention services. The services of lightning disaster monitoring, prediction and identification have been carried out widely in the province. |