As a meteorological monitoring system consisting of 400 radars, 1,606 automatic meteorological stations and six satellites was put in place in China by the end of 2003, meteorological information becomes increasingly accessible to the Chinese society.  

China has successfully modernized its meteorological services, said Qin Dahe, director of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), Tuesday at a ceremony in Beijing celebrating International Meteorological Day, which falls on March 23 every year.

To mark this year's Meteorological Day, themed "Weather, Climate and Water in an Information Age", CMA entertained visitors from all walks of life last Saturday, opening the usually low-profile administration to questions such as "why snowfall in Beijing kept decreasing in recent years" and showing over 2,000 interested people how weather-forecasting TV programs are made.

Hu Yuanyuan, a student from the Beijing-based University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) who toured CMA last Saturday, told Xinhua that it is of critical importance to learn meteorological knowledge because "almost all human activities are closely related to factors such as weather, climate and water."

In fact, against a backdrop of unprecedented social and economic changes, the human society is facing many challenges in disaster-relief, food security, management of water resources, transportation, tourism and pollution control, all of which can not be independent of meteorological factors.

Statistics with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) show meteorological and hydrographic disasters contributed to over 80 percent of total losses caused by natural disasters in the past ten years.

As one of the countries witnessing the most frequent meteorological disasters worldwide, China is pestered by natural mishaps such as drought, flood, heat and frost. Some 600 million Chinese people were affected by such meteorological uncertainties and the disasters lead to losses amounting to three to six percent of the national economic output every year.

However, as the Chinese society is attaching greater importance to "realizing a sustainable development", weather, climate and water, factors playing key roles in the national economy, have attracted unprecedented attention from the general public.

Wang Yongguang, an expert from the China Climate Center, said scientific and technological development, especially the increasingly extensive application of information technologies, has made accurate weather and climate monitoring and forecasting possible.

"Quick collection and distribution of meteorological information will greatly facilitate the cause of reasonably developing and protecting climatic and water resources," said Wang.

International Meteorological Day was launched by WMO in 1960 to commemorate the WMO treaty that came into effect on March 23, 1950. The annual event focuses on a particular theme each year and features global activities aiming to popularize meteorological knowledge and information among the general public.

(Xinhua News Agency March 24, 2004)