On August 13, 2010, a storm, mountain torrent and mud-rock flow took place in Qingping County, Mianzhu, Sichuan. After receiving the early warning of meteorological disaster, meteorological informant Deng Xinghong spread the information via telephones, SMS and loudspeakers in the area and transferred more than 400 people. He also reminded the Village’s CPC Committee and Government to initiate the emergency plan and safely transfer more than 580,000 people. 

Rural areas are weak in disaster prevention and mitigation and the work focus of China Meteorological Administration. In 2010, CMA issued Directive Comments on Strengthening Agricultural Meteorological Service System and Directive Comments on Strengthening Construction of a Rural Meteorological Disaster Defense System to make the construction of the two systems an important path for meteorological work’s further expansion to grassroots and a new breakthrough and key point for social meteorological management. 

In recent years, China has increased the weather forecast accuracy and intensified rural meteorological disaster risk management year by year. Meteorological departments have carried out refined weather forecast pilot service, built the township-level weather forecast system and the approaching weather forecast system for disastrous weather and improved the weather forecast accuracy year by year. We have carried out nationwide historical meteorological disastrous status survey, regionalization of meteorological disaster risks like floods, droughts and typhoons, township-level emergency preparation certification for meteorological disasters and lightning prevention projects for rural primary and high schools county by county, thus offering practical help for farmers to avoid disasters and risks.       

The coverage of rural public meteorological services is greatly expanded. The rural comprehensive information service is more perfect. The rural economic information network has covered more than 270 prefectural cities and 1300 counties in 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities). And nearly 40,000 rural meteorological service stations and 700,000 meteorological informants are scattered in 68% of total townships nationwide. The “last kilometer” problem in the rural disaster prevention and mitigation is being gradually solved. 

The professional agricultural meteorological network is being gradually improved, highlighting the benefits of modern agricultural meteorological service. Weather forecast and agricultural meteorological disaster monitoring, early warning and evaluation customized for farmers on critical, disastrous and transitional weather have become “brand meteorological services” for farmers. 

We have established a three-dimensional monitoring system for severe agricultural meteorological disasters, innovated forecast and early warning methods, built risk and influence evaluation models and developed technical integration systems. The combination of ground observation, value simulation and 3S technology has generally achieved the three-dimensional dynamic monitoring system integrating aerospace, air and ground observations. We have also developed comprehensive agro-meteorological multi-disaster forcasting and early warning method combined with different forecast period models. The setup of dynamic pre-evaluation model has realized the dynamic pre-evaluation of major agricultural meteorological disasters, and established a technical system integrating disaster risk analysis, pre-evaluation tracing, post-disaster evaluation and countermeasures.