China has been supporting the United Nations' Early Warnings for All (EW4ALL) Initiative and sharing early warning experience with the international community.

Today, let's gain insight into severe convection (gale) monitoring, warning, services demonstration epitome initiated by Jiangsu Provincial Meteorological Service (hereinafter referred to as the Service).

A heavy rain weather process demonstrated the effectiveness of severe convection (gale) monitoring, warning, services of the Service

From June 21, this year, areas along the Huaihe River and its southern portions in Jiangsu Province, China were subjected to the first heavy rain weather process after the plum rain in 2024, and severe convective weather such as strong thunder and lightning, thunderstorms and gales occurred in Suzhou, Changzhou, Nantong and Nanjing.

During this weather process, the heaviest rainfall period emerged from the night of June 21 to the daytime of June 22. As a matter of fact, as early as the afternoon of June 21, the Service launched the real-time video command and response of provincial and municipal meteorological departments to respond to severe convective weather, and take effective measures in forecasting and warning, meteorological services, joint prevention and coordination, and information sharing.

Jiangsu Provincial Meteorological Observatory has promptly responded and provided work guidance for affected areas. From June 21 to 10 a.m. on June 23, 3 yellow warnings of severe convection and heavy rain have been issued.

On the night of June 21, the on-duty personnel of Jiangsu Provincial Meteorological Observatory kept tabs on the changes of the weather condition and conducted forecasting and early warning. Credits to the Service

Municipal and county-level meteorological departments of Jiangsu timely responded, successively issued 152 warning information such as heavy rain, severe convection, thunderstorms and gales, and gained more time for relevant departments to take coping measures.

Oriented towards enhancing forecasting and warning, at 12:00 on June 22, the Service activated the “green channel”of rainstorm weather short messages dissemination in Suzhou, covering 22.339 million short message subscribers in Jiangsu and outside of the province in total.

Insight into "Jiangsu plan" in terms of meteorological early warning

The effective response of this heavy rain weather process is just a case a point in terms of the application of severe convection (gale) monitoring, warning, services demonstration system construction initiated by the Service.

Severe convection monitoring and warning platform of Jiangsu Credits to the Service

Since 2021, the Service has improved research on severe convective weather response geared to the characteristics of multiple, frequent and intense severe convective weather in recent years, and ramped up the capacity to grapple with extreme severe weather from the aspects of weather monitoring, forecasting and warning, information dissemination, and joint prevention, and above all, provided "Jiangsu Plan" of meteorological early warning practice.

Coordinated operational layout of severe convection of Jiangsu monitoring and warning Credits to the Service

Let's delve into how the Service conducts related work and facilitates concrete progresses in the following aspects.

As regards weather monitoring, the Service has set up more automatic weather stations, and automatic weather stations on sea surface platforms in areas prone to severe convection, built vertical observing systems such as sounding stations, wind profile radar stations and microwave radiometers, and developed multi-band radar networking scheme and multi-modal coordinated observation technology. Furthermore, the tornado monitoring rate has reached 81.3%.

X-band weather radar in Kunshan, Jiangsu Credits to the Service

In terms of forecasting and warning, the Service has come up with more than 20 typical severe convective weather monitoring and warning technologies such as regarding tornado, thunderstorm and gale, hail, and short-term heavy precipitation. It has spearheaded tornado potential forecasting and severe convective and gale warning service above scale 10 in China.

As to information dissemination, the Service has established a communication network of warning information release divided into 20 categories through 695 channels and simultaneously created 4 specific "green channels" and 3 compulsory reception channels. The warning information release rate across the whole network has been boosted by 10 times, and warning short messages can fully cover provincial subscribers inside and outside Jiangsu in 3 hours in a dynamic manner, and can reach townships (streets) levels.

In terms of joint prevention, the Service actively practices China's meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation mechanism featured by Government-led, Risk warning, Elaborate forecast, Sectoral linkage, and All on board (GEARS). In the meanwhile, local governments at all levels of Jiangsu have also established an emergency linkage mechanism guided by meteorological disaster warning information.

Xiangshui County, Yancheng of Jiangsu is just a paradigm. Oriented towards severe convection prevention at the primary level, Xiangshui has accumulated rich experience and practice in terms of high degree of information sharing, highlight of "call and response", high-level overall planning of command work, efficient response and linkage, and carried out accurate and effective work in meteorological disaster mitigation and prevention.

Special thanks to Jiangsu Provincial Meteorological Service, and CHEN Xiaoying from the Service

Editor: LIU Shuqiao