By ZHAO YIMENG
Countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative have expressed a keenness to be involved in a meteorology project China set up recently that uses artificial intelligence to improve weather forecasting. The project is particularly pertinent given the increasingly frequent extreme weather worldwide.
Kouam Magloire, head of the data processing office of meteorological services in Cameroon, said the project could provide an opportunity for the country to strengthen its early warning systems and respond more effectively to extreme weather events.
The project, set up last month, is funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology and led by the Centre for Earth System Modelling and Prediction of the China Meteorological Administration.
It builds on China’s MAZU early warning system, an open-source meteorological service platform now being used in countries including Ethiopia and Pakistan to support real-time weather monitoring and disaster alerts.
Leta Bekele Gudina, an expert with the Ethiopian Meteorological Institute, said China is at the forefront of meteorological forecasting and AI development.
“Ethiopia hopes to gain access to advanced technologies through the project, train local professionals and help fill the country’s gap in nowcasting and early warning services,” he said.
Many countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative face rising risks from extreme weather and climate events, the China Meteorological Administration said. Between 1980 and 2022 direct economic losses from meteorological disasters in these countries averaged $214.7 billion a year, accounting for about 28.4 per cent of global losses.
Many of these countries have limited meteorological infrastructure, including sparse observation networks and insufficient computing capacity. The meteorological gap has become a key constraint on disaster preparedness and sustainable development.
To tackle these challenges, the project aims to develop an integrated AI-based forecasting system that can produce predictions from short-term to subseasonal time scales. The system combines physical atmospheric models with AI approaches and will be adapted for local conditions.
An integrated intelligent forecasting device will be designed for flexible deployment in countries with different levels of technical infrastructure, the China Meteorological Administration said.
Han Wei, the project leader, said the platform will operate for at least six months in more than six countries, with early warning services expected to reach about 10 million people.
