Earlier this year, when Typhoon Wutip formed in the South China Sea, meteorologists in Hainan Province pinpointed its genesis and likely track well in advance.
Strong winds and rough waves are seen at the Dadonghai sea area in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, June 13, 2025. (Photo: Xinhua)
They then rolled out a tiered service package, giving provincial authorities the granular intelligence they needed to keep damage to a minimum.
That foresight rested squarely on projects financed by China's additional treasury-bond program: new X-band phased-array radars and a revamped smart meteorological disaster-mitigation platform.
In 2023, the central government issued an extra 1 trillion yuan ($139.29 billion) in treasury bonds to speed post-disaster reconstruction and sharpen the nation's disaster-prevention edge. Meteorology was singled out as a priority, with 220 projects approved. Damaged county-level weather stations, observation gear and IT infrastructure have already been repaired or upgraded.
With the support of these projects, China has rapidly expanded its meteorological monitoring network ‒ from cities to rural areas, from mountaintops to coastal islands ‒ strengthening the country's first line of defense against weather-related disasters.
This enhanced system mitigates risks, averts losses, supports development and delivers benefits, providing strong support for safeguarding lives, promoting production, improving livelihoods and preserving ecosystems.
A smarter pulse on shifting skies
In Southwest China's Chongqing municipality, where the cliffs of the Three Gorges rise steeply on both sides of the river, 381 weather observation stations have been planned and built to cover 431 known rockfall hazard points.
This ensures comprehensive coverage of weather conditions within a 1-kilometer radius of every known danger point.
On the edge of the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, meteorological authorities have established 58 new intelligent observation stations, effectively eliminating monitoring blind spots.
Meteorological monitoring provides the foundation for accurate forecasts and early warnings. Accurate forecasting relies on precise, gap-free monitoring.
Only through comprehensive and tightly integrated coverage ‒ both across time and finely gridded spatial dimensions ‒ can meteorologists truly grasp every shift in atmospheric conditions, thus providing strong support for forecasts and warnings and continually improving their accuracy.
Across remote cliffs, deserts and mountains, bond-funded meteorological projects are filling critical gaps in weather monitoring. By establishing an integrated network spanning air, space and ground, these efforts enable more precise detection and prediction of extreme weather events: strengthening early warnings and disaster preparedness.
A citizen rides amid heavy rainfall in Beihai City, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, June 14, 2025.
Sharper calculations for every weather event
Accurate algorithms, strong computing power and fast processing are essential for producing precise forecasts and warnings.
The projects funded by additional treasury bonds have continuously enhanced the computing capacity of weather forecast systems, enabling more accurate predictions of each weather event.
In Sichuan Province in Southwest China, meteorological authorities pioneered the integration of graphics processing unit computing in a provincial meteorological node, cutting the processing time for 45-layer 3D wind field fusion analysis from 14 minutes to 5 minutes and 36 seconds and reducing the time for 1-kilometer-resolution precipitation analysis from 144 seconds to just 54 minutes.
In North China's Shanxi Province, the meteorological department built a local node of a meteorological big data cloud platform, reducing data service response time to 0.16 seconds, with a total of 196 million data retrieval requests handled in 2024.
In Chongqing, data has been integrated across departments and sectors, and an AI-powered forecasting model has been developed, improving both the accuracy of forecasts and the lead time of warnings.
The local treasury bond projects have incorporated data from more than 3,000 automatic weather stations and over 6,000 observation sites operated by departments such as water resources, emergency management and natural resources.
Altogether, they bring together five major categories of data, comprising over 1,800 data types, to support an AI-based weather forecasting model that now covers the entire Chengdu-Chongqing region.
The upgraded forecast system is now operating at full capacity, staying one step ahead of dangerous weather. On June 29, 2024, based on forecast and warning information, 55 residents in Changba township, Wulong district, Chongqing, were evacuated in advance, successfully avoiding a landslide.
At 12:35 am on July 10, the meteorological bureau of Dazu district in Chongqing issued a precise warning that rainfall in certain areas would exceed 50 millimeters in the next six hours, which helped relocate more than 300 residents at risk in the district's Longshui township.
This photo taken with a mobile phone shows a staff member adjusting a meteorological observation device at the Tuotuohe Meteorological Station in Northwest China's Qinghai Province, June 30, 2024. (Photo: Xinhua)
Finer protection for economic and social development
In core farmlands in Northeast China's Jilin Province, meteorological stations now blanket the terrain every 500 meters. Soil moisture, temperature and rainfall are sampled every minute. At a black soil research base, erosion monitors and crop water-heat sensors generate real-time degradation alerts. This pioneering model for soil conservation is now promoted nationwide.
Down south, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has upgraded all 702 automated weather stations to six-element stations, providing more detailed real-time data to support weather analysis. This helps extend the operating time of the Beihai-Weizhou Island route by 13 hours, generating an additional 3.9 million yuan in tourism revenue.
In southern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, a region rich in wind energy resources, 10 newly installed wind lidars not only provide data for wind power project assessments, but also detect Level 10 gusts six hours before a wind disaster strikes.
This early warning has enabled power companies to shut down operations in time, preventing equipment losses of over 10 million yuan.
The implementation of the treasury bond projects has not only strengthened disaster prevention and mitigation but also delivered wider benefits by helping avoid risks and unlock potential.
By analyzing meteorological data, these projects enable tailored forecasts for specific industries, supporting efficient, high-quality and safe operations in sectors such as agriculture, transportation, energy and cultural tourism.
With continuous upgrades in meteorological technology and increasingly refined services, these efforts are driving the modernization of public services.
Thanks to the momentum from these projects, China's meteorological services can now do more than just forecasting rain, wind and snow. They are actively safeguarding lives and supporting development.
Against the backdrop of global climate change, they are helping the country better respond to extreme weather events, enhance society's overall resilience to climate risks and provide stronger protection for the steady progress of Chinese modernization.