In the context of global climate change, economic and social development is confronted with mounting climate risks and challenges. How to grapple with climate challenges, mitigate disaster losses, and ensure the safety of people's lives and properties is becoming a new topic.

From 24 to 28 February, the 62nd Session of the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (hereinafter referred to as the Session) is held in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. On February 23, over 40 representatives to the 62nd Session of IPCC visited Zhejiang Provincial Meteorological Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Centre and recognized Zhejiang's meteorological early warning practice.

In recent years, Zhejiang of China has been committed to exploring and practicing a meteorological early warning system to provide China's Zhejiang solution for addressing climate change and global governance of disaster prevention and mitigation. As China is actively implementing Early Warnings for All Initiative (EW4All) of the United Nations, the early warning practice of Zhejiang will provide a template for Members of the World Meteorological Organization and the global community.

Early warning service and monitoring platform of emergency warning and release system in Zhejiang Source: the Service

Forecasting and warning as orders

Zhejiang is located in the southeast coast of China, which is highly susceptible to meteorological hazards such as rainstorm, high temperature, super typhoon and local severe convection. At the same time, Zhejiang, as a economic powerhouse in eastern China, is densely-populated, and the impacts of meteorological disasters has amplification effect.

Zhejiang is a pioneering practice area for early warning in China. Under the framework of China's meteorological early warning system, Zhejiang adheres to government leadership, warning as the command, departmental linkage, and social participation, promoting the implementation and effectiveness of various work across the entire chain and departments.

Taking flood control and typhoon prevention as an example, Zhejiang Provincial Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters has taken the initiative to establish the "1833" joint command system (hereinafter referred to as the System). Zhejiang Provincial Meteorological Service (hereinafter referred to as the Service) has fully integrated into the System, playing a leading role in warning throughout the entire chain, effectively promoting the formation of a "forecasting and warning as the command" meteorological disaster prevention work pattern of Zhejiang.

Flood and typhoon prevention "1833" joint command system Source: the Service

In June 2024, the intense plum rain affected many regions in Zhejiang, and the System was swiftly "activated". Under the leadership of governments at all levels, relevant departments closely worked together and adopted "five-closedown" measures according to the weather warning alerts. For instance, in Wenzhou, 7 A-level scenic spots related to the sea and islands were closed. And Taizhou orderly and safely transferred 1237 people away from hazardous area related to the sea.

4 categories of severe weather warnings and 13 types of meteorological disaster warning signals have jointly formed the early warning product system with Zhejiang characteristics. The meteorological and water conservancy, natural resources, construction, agriculture and rural areas, marine and other departments fully share data. Through data hubs, quality control, processing, and storage on the meteorological big data cloud platform “Tianqing”, the Service builds a "meteorological brain" to provide cloud application services such as data, maps, calculations, and applications in the form of interfaces and components, supporting the province's meteorological monitoring, forecasting, early warning, and service.

The Service has also established a domestic supercomputer system with a computing power of 2.38 PFlops. Besides, the detection coverage of S and X-band weather radars at a height of 1.5 km is refined to 93%, and the spatio-temporal resolution of S-band radar is refined to 62.5 m×4 min.

Relevant departments and primary-level units use meteorological warning information as the trigger standard for taking coordinated defense measures. After the meteorological warning is issued, various fields quickly respond and activate corresponding defense actions according to different warning levels.

“Grid + meteorology" connects the "terminal nerve" of primary-level defense

Nationwide, the grid is the smallest unit of primary-level social governance. Each grid manages several to dozens of households. By building the ability to directly disseminate meteorological warning information to the grid, assigning the responsibility of receiving and releasing grid information, and strengthening training to enhance the capacity of grid personnel to respond to meteorological disasters, the average time from receiving warning information to effectively tackle disaster risks at the primary level has been shortened by more than 30 minutes, which has won the initiative for primary-level disaster avoidance.

In August 2023, grid personnel entered villages and households to record farmers' meteorological service needs. Photoed by SHEN Tianfa

On June 30, 2020, rainstorm triggered flooding in Jiangshan, Quzhou. All the affected people were evacuated, safe and sound. Behind the safety transfer, Jiangshan has promoted the instrumental practice of integrating meteorological disaster prevention into the primary-level governance system with "grid + meteorology".

Since then, the "grid + meteorology" mechanism has been promoted in Zhejiang, and grid personnel have become the "terminal nerve" of primary-level defense to activate disaster prevention and mitigation, which is in line with the concept of EW4All. Currently, over 100,000 km²of Zhejiang, there are more than 500,000 grid personnel responsible for meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation.

These practices and experience of Zhejiang in early warning have not only provided a role model for other regions in China but also serve as helpful reference to the entire world in terms of effective disaster prevention and mitigation.

In collaboration with Zhejiang Provincial Meteorological Service

Special thanks to JIAN Jufang

Editor: LIU Shuqiao