The public weather services refer to the process that the meteorological administration offers the weather information and technologies to the policy-making department of the governments, the public and the production sector by employing the public resources or public power.

In 2006, No. 3 Document of the State Council put forward the concept of “serving the public, building safety weather and integrating weather resources” and emphasized the vigorous development of the public meteorological services. In 2008, the 5th national meteorological service working meeting expatiated on the connotation, nature, positioning and development objectives of the public weather services and put forward the concept of “demand-oriented and service-led” weather services. Since then the public weather services developed rapidly.

Meteorological information is disseminated through multi-channels. 

In 2008, China Meteorological Administration Public Weather Service Center was set up and opened a public service hotline. In the following three years, the public weather service centers of various provinces (autonomic regions and municipalities) have been set up and improved to better the public weather services.

Since launched in 2008, the weather website (www.weather.com.cn) has formed a four-level (the central government, province, city and county) three-dimensional public weather network service structure and a unified and authoritative brand of public weather service. The website sees more than 150 million clicks per day on average, ranking the first in terms of the page views in the domestic service websites of China. Launched in 2006, China Weather TV has reached the level of developed countries in terms of the program production and technical equipment. The channel airs the weather information round the clock, and the weather early warning information in real time. At present, it has been launched in 279 prefecture-level cities of 30 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities). CCTV, China Weather TV and other state-level TV stations and provincial public TV media have produced more than 70 and 3,000 weather forecast programs, respectively.

At present, a meteorological information release system with a wide coverage has been gradually improved. The weather information is not only released through the traditional media and channels such as TV, radio, newspaper, outdoor electronic display, countryside speaker, and grassroots weather information stations, but also the new technical channels such as Internet, microblog, WeChat, and mobile phone client software. The life weather services for travel and health become richer and more detailed. In 2012, the survey with questionnaire indicated that the public satisfaction to the public weather services reached 86.2. (Up to 2014)