A new generation of the Doppler weather radar system was officially added to the country’s weather-forecasting system yesterday, New Year’s Day.
The new-generation system not only provides forecasters with more accurate weather information, but also provides technological support for a range of services, from regular weather forecasting to on-demand weather services, according to a release from Shenzhen Meteorological Observatory yesterday.
The dual polarization radar system installed on Fenghuang Mountain in Bao’an District, around 6 km from the mouth of the Pearl River, can send and receive both horizontal and vertical pulses, providing much more informative two-dimensional pictures that can help broadcasters clearly identify rain, hail, snow and ice pellets, and other flying objects, improving forecasting for all types of weather. The conventional radar system can only send out a horizontal pulse that gives forecasters a one-dimensional picture of whatever is in the air.
After more than two years of construction, the radar system provides high-quality data on radar displays because the detection resolution has been increased to 250 meters from the conventional radar system’s 1,000-meter resolution.
The detection area of the system has a diameter of 920 kilometers. As the system adopts dual-channel imaging technologies, it enables the mapping of the radar systems in South China into the national weather radar network, and thus extends the city’s weather detection coverage 1,200 kilometers northward. The system will provide solid technical support for precision monitoring and forecasting of disastrous weather, such as typhoons and thunderstorms, in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area by mapping onto other radar systems in the area.