From January 31 to February 5, widespread rainy and snowy weather process continuously plagued China, with central-eastern regions most affected.

During this process, China Meteorological Administration (CMA) was monitoring and forecasting the changing weather with a wide range of meteorological technologies.

The National Meteorological Centre (NMC) has taken advantage of the complete intelligent grid objective forecasting system with newly added rain and snow elements of snow thickness, freezing rainfall and snowfall, and of the automatic quantitative monitoring products like snow thickness, ice accumulation, as well as of the forecasting products of winter rain and snow elements, all of which have strongly underpinned the monitoring, forecasting and warning of this weather process. 

National precipitation from January 27 to February 6 Credits to NMC

The National Satellite Meteorological Centre (NSMC) has harnessed inversed temperature profiling products of  Geostationary Interferometric Infrared Sounder (GIIRS) onboard FENGYUN-4A to monitor and characterize  atmospheric horizontal distribution and vertical distribution in real time, and Precipitation Measurement Radar (PMR) onboard FY-3G to monitor the three-dimensional structure of precipitation, as well as the satellite images, inversed cloud top temperature, and cloud top height products of FY-4A to keep tabs on the evolving precipitation cloud system.

True color image captured by FY-4A at 09:00 on February 4 Credits to NSMC

The National Meteorological Information Centre (NMIC) has provided 24-hour minimum temperature, wind and snowfall conditions, releasing important information such as accumulated precipitation and minimum temperature in key affected areas in Anhui and Hubei. Tianqing real-time integrated visualization platform is used to ensure weather consultation on wire icing and rain rime in particular. Its component of Spring Festival travel rush has delivered comprehensive, accurate and timely services thanks to its integration of various meteorological data and sector resources.

Tianqing provides services for Spring Festival travel rush Credits to NMIC

CMA Meteorological Observation Centre (MOC) held observation meetings, according to which the systems of Tianheng and Tianyan were leveraged, and observation products covering radar monitoring, vertical observation, rain and snow phase condition, and wire ice accumulation were fully harnessed to closely monitor the weather in the affected areas, making and releasing the messages of observation services in a timely manner.

Distribution of atmospheric precipitable water at 12:00 on February 5 Credits to MOC

Editor: LIU Shuqiao