When unexpected rainstorms pour down on unprepared people, the
results could be disastrous.
Rainstorm-triggered tragedies have been rife this summer, and
casualty reports have surfaced from virtually every place hit by a
serious storm.
He Lifu, chief weather forecaster at the China National
Observatory (CNO), told China Daily that predicting
rainstorms remained a challenge both at home and abroad.
He said the forecast accuracy for rainstorms in China is about
12 percent.
"That means only 12 out of every 100 rainstorms is foreseeable,"
he said.
"So many unpredictable factors contribute to the form of each
rainstorm that it can be hard to measure time, place, frequency and
scale," he said.
Rainstorms seldom send out visible signals on the monitoring
map, he added.
In addition, none of the currently available weather monitoring
equipment is capable of predicting an approaching storm with
100-percent accuracy.
There are still some places in China, particularly in the West
and Northwest, that are not covered by weather radars.
The United States, which leads many countries in terms of its
ability to predict storms thanks to a well-distributed radar
network, has only 20 percent accuracy in predicting the weather,
statistics from the CNO show.
The rainstorm forecasting accuracy ranges from 15 percent to 20
percent in Japan, Europe and Australia.
"Improving accuracy is a common concern in the world," He said,
noting the large number of rainstorm-triggered floods, land slides
and mud flows that have occurred across the world this summer.
When it comes to facing a volatile rainstorm, the readiness of
the people is a crucial part of minimizing losses.
During a rainstorm in Jinan on July 18, many people were caught
unprepared by a sudden urban flood, which claimed 31 lives and
injured nearly 200 residents.
"Informing the public, the sooner the better, and by all
possible means, is a key concern," He said.
The country's weather authorities have drawn up regulations
governing the transmission of disaster warning signals to better
deal with the extreme weather.
Sending warning signals and organizing relief work are to be
used to judge the performance of weather officials.
Wang Bangzhong, deputy director of the weather forecasting and
disaster mitigation department under the China Meteorological
Administration, said: "In the fight against extreme weather, we aim
to send out warning signals faster than the effects of a disaster
can spread."
(China Daily August 14, 2007)