What is the Winter Olympics weather service? | 50 days to go

December 16, 2021

"50 Days Countdown to Winter Olympics" Anniversary

As the opening time approaches

The atmosphere of the Winter Olympics is getting stronger

As one of the important guarantees for the Winter Olympics

Winter Olympics meteorological service support attracts much attention

So

What exactly does the Winter Olympics meteorological service provide?

What is its significance to the event?

Who is engaged in the Winter Olympics meteorological service?

Nine Questions and Nine Answers

Let me make it all clear this time.

1

How is the meteorological service for this Winter Olympics different from previous ones?

Although they can all be referred to as Winter Olympics meteorological services, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics (Winter Paralympics) is the first time that my country's meteorological department will provide services for Winter Olympic events from the perspective of the host country. Its core purpose is to provide necessary meteorological guarantees for the smooth holding of the event and various activities during the event based on the needs of the Olympic Committee. This is also an important responsibility entrusted by the Olympic Committee to the host countries of previous Winter Olympics.

In previous Winter Olympics, the services provided by my country's meteorological department were mainly special services for the Chinese Olympic delegation, with the aim of helping our winter Olympic athletes adapt to local weather and climate conditions in a foreign country and achieve good results in the competition.

Although the two are significantly different, they are also related. In 2018, my country provided weather support for Chinese athletes going to Pyeongchang, South Korea for the Winter Olympics. On the one hand, it served our athletes, and on the other hand, it also helped us become familiar with the weather service process for the Winter Olympics and accumulate experience for being a good host in 2022.

2

Who will the Winter Olympics meteorological service mainly serve?

In a narrow sense, meteorological services for the Winter Olympics are provided to ensure the smooth holding of various events based on the needs of the Olympic Committee; in a broad sense, meteorological services for the Winter Olympics extend to the entire venue complex, various activities during the events, and even the operation of the host city.

Event services are the core content of the Winter Olympics meteorological services. Meteorological factors have a great impact on the safety and smooth development of winter sports, especially snow sports. According to the requirements of the Olympic Committee, at least two meteorological service personnel must be arranged for each venue for snow and sliding events to provide on-site services; in addition, there are full-time forecasters in meteorological service sub-centers such as Beijing, Yanqing, and Chongli to provide forecast product support for the meteorological service personnel at the venue. The above-mentioned meteorological workers mainly serve the Olympic Committee and the participating teams. On each competition day, the meteorological service personnel at the venue will interpret the weather conditions during the competition to the organizing committee, referees and each team at the team leader meeting based on the forecast products, and provide support for whether to adjust the competition plan.

Meteorological workers are measuring the temperature of the snow surface at the ski jumping venue.

In addition to the event services, the meteorological department also provides critical services around the core areas of the Winter Olympics, namely the venues, the Winter Olympic Village, and the main cultural and sports events during the Games. These services are directly connected to the Olympic Committee, providing support for the overall scheduling of personnel commuting, material transportation, event development, and viewing arrangements in the core areas, as well as event broadcasting.

The FIS technical representative checks the weather information.

In terms of peripheral services, the meteorological department should focus on providing security for urban operations to all relevant units. For example, athletes going from the airport to the Winter Olympic Village, from the Winter Olympics to various competition venues, etc., require safe and smooth urban traffic. Once high-impact weather occurs, urban operation security is the basis for ensuring the safety of the core area and the smooth progress of the event.

Around the Winter Olympics, the meteorological department has formed a service structure of "protecting the core from the periphery, and protecting the events from the core".

3

What is the meteorological work for the Winter Olympics?

In addition to the meticulous "one policy for each event" and "one policy for each item" services for events, core areas and urban operations, the meteorological work of the Winter Olympics cannot be separated from the support of monitoring, forecasting, and scientific research.

In order to smoothly carry out the competition events, most of the snow sports venues have objective environments such as large altitude differences and complex microclimate environments. During the competition, there is a high demand for refined monitoring and forecasting of factors such as wind, temperature, and visibility. Therefore, precision monitoring is the basis. At present, my country has built more than 50 track meteorological stations in the core competition area, and with the addition of various types of weather radars, a "three-dimensional, second-level, multi-factor" monitoring network has been formed. During the competition, equipment support personnel will perform routine maintenance on the observation equipment every day; in extreme weather, emergency maintenance of the equipment is also required.

Automatic weather station on Mount Haituo.

In terms of forecasting, in order to meet the service needs of the Winter Olympics, the meteorological department has built the China Meteorological Administration Beijing Rapid Update Cyclic Numerical Forecasting System with a resolution of 500 meters in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and a resolution of 100 meters in the core area of ​​the Winter Olympics mountain venues, and a rapid update every 10 minutes. It has the ability to accurately forecast at the "hundred-meter level and minute level", effectively improving the forecast accuracy of the Winter Olympics competition area. During the Games, in addition to the forecast teams of the meteorological service sub-centers in Beijing, Yanqing, Chongli, and other places, as well as the meteorological experts stationed at the Beijing Winter Olympics (Winter Paralympics) Command Center (MOC), the Central Meteorological Observatory and meteorological departments in many places in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei will closely hold consultations and make and release various forecast products.

In terms of scientific research, national and local meteorological research units have been conducting scientific research for many years, focusing on the study of boundary layer characteristics in complex mountainous areas, comprehensive observation and numerical simulation of winter snowfall, short-term numerical forecast of mountain meteorology, intelligent grid forecast, and meteorological support for air rescue, providing scientific and technological support for meteorological work.

4

When does the meteorological work for the Winter Olympics begin?

As early as 2013, when Beijing proposed the bid for the Winter Olympics (Paralympics), the meteorological department conducted research on the climate background of Beijing, Zhangjiakou and other places to provide services for the bid. From October to November 2014, based on the data needs of the bid, the meteorological department successively built several meteorological stations in Yanqing, Chongli and other places, laying the foundation for a successful bid.

After Beijing successfully bid for the Winter Olympics in 2015, the meteorological department began to set up a Winter Olympics forecast service team. In 2017, the first batch of forecasters entered the core area of ​​the event for months of concentrated winter training. Since then, forecasters have been trained every year. They delved into the difficult problems of mountain weather forecasting, became familiar with Winter Olympic events, learned foreign languages ​​and skiing, endured loneliness and ordinary life, and persisted all the way to fulfill the "five-year promise".

Forecaster Tao Yiwei attended the team leaders' meeting held online and introduced weather trends in English.

At the same time, the construction of monitoring station network and scientific and technological research are also being carried out closely. At the end of 2019, the three-dimensional meteorological observation station network in the Winter Olympics competition area was basically completed, including the track meteorological station. In the urban area of ​​Beijing, Yanqing and Chongli, the meteorological department has built 441 sets of modern three-dimensional observation facilities, which can meet the dual service needs of complex mountainous areas and megacities; at the beginning of 2020, the successful guarantee of the "Meet in Beijing" test competition indicated that the Winter Olympics meteorological forecast service system meets the business operation standards.

5

How many people are involved in the meteorological work of the Winter Olympics?

According to Zhao Weidong, director of the News and Publicity Department of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee and executive deputy director of the Publicity Department of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, the meteorological department has selected the best weather forecast service personnel in the country to form a 52-person Beijing Winter Olympics weather forecast team.

However, the "52 people" here only refer to the forecast service personnel for the event. There are also a large number of staff in the meteorological department who provide meteorological services around the core area of ​​the Winter Olympics (venue cluster, Winter Olympic Village), urban operation support, etc.; there are also many people in the fields of equipment support, scientific and technological research and development, popular science publicity, etc., who contribute to the meteorological services for the Winter Olympics. It should be said that my country's meteorological department has gathered the strength of the whole country and actively participated in the work related to the Winter Olympics meteorology.

Distribution of Winter Olympic Games competition areas and venues. Photo: Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee official website

6

Where do Winter Olympics weather forecasters come from?

The Winter Olympics weather forecast service team includes not only members from the meteorological departments of Beijing and Hebei, but also many outstanding forecasters from the meteorological departments of Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, etc. As the leading national forecasting unit, the China Meteorological Administration dispatched five forecasters to the front line to participate in the forecast service.

Forecasters from the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, Yanqing District Meteorological Bureau, Hebei Provincial Meteorological Bureau, Zhangjiakou Municipal Meteorological Bureau, and Chongli District Meteorological Bureau, with their enthusiasm for "holding the Winter Olympics at my doorstep", provided relevant forecasting services for the venue area and urban operations, and various cultural and sports activities during the Games.

7

Winter Olympics vs Summer Olympics, which one has greater demand for services?

With the successful bid for the Winter Olympics, Beijing has become the world's first "double Olympic city" to successfully host both the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics.

The Summer Olympics have more events and participants. At the same time, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games coincides with the flood season, so high-impact weather activities are more complicated.

Compared with the Summer Olympics, the Winter Olympics is special in that meteorological factors directly affect whether the relevant events can be carried out smoothly. Wind force, wind speed, temperature, snowfall, snow temperature, snow quality, visibility, etc. are all related to the safety of athletes and affect the results of the competition. Therefore, forecasters need to help the event find a suitable "window period".

Members of the Zhangjiakou competition area meteorological service team used a microscope to observe snow particles and record the shape of each snowflake. Photo by Zhang Xiaorui

Too high temperatures may cause snowmelt at the ski resorts, while too low temperatures may cause physical damage to athletes; wind force and direction have a great impact on the safety and aerial posture of athletes in alpine skiing, platform jumping and other events. In previous Winter Olympics, events have been postponed many times due to "wind"; once natural snowfall occurs, the snow slopes need to be cleared in time; visibility will affect the line of sight of athletes and referees, and is a key factor in the safety of high-speed sliding events such as alpine skiing.

A snowmaking device is working. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Chenlin

In general, the Winter Olympics relies more on meteorological services, has more specific requirements, and requires a higher level of forecast refinement. At the Winter Olympics, event weather forecast service personnel are members of the core service team. During the Games, they maintain close communication with technical experts from the International Winter Sports Federation several times a day to help them arrange the events.

8

Why propose the "minute-level, 100-meter-level" service goals?

The "minute-level, hundred-meter-level" meteorological service goals that we are familiar with are based on the actual needs of the Winter Olympics and the specific environment of the venues.

Mountain weather forecasting is an internationally recognized problem. The weather environment changes drastically with every 100-meter altitude difference; it is another scene after crossing a mountain ridge. The weather change patterns in mountainous areas are also extremely complex. However, only this kind of terrain environment can meet the competition requirements of winter events.

The three-dimensional atmospheric simulation "background field" of the mountainous area in the Yanqing competition area has a resolution of 37 meters.

Taking the alpine skiing track in the Yanqing competition area as an example, the competition environment has the characteristics of short horizontal distance and large vertical drop. However, for forecasting, it will face the test of "four seasons in one day" and "different weather every ten miles" under the complex terrain of the mountainous area. In order to accurately grasp the different weather conditions at the top of the mountain, halfway up the mountain, and at the foot of the mountain, and accurately judge the laws of weather changes during the competition, it is necessary to be more precise, accurate, and detailed from the perspective of monitoring, forecasting, and service.

Therefore, faced with the high forecasting difficulty and the need to forecast a wide range of meteorological elements, the meteorological department has proposed the "minute-level, 100-meter-level" goal. Through recent years of technical research and model development, the meteorological department has been able to achieve a 100-meter resolution and 10-minute fast update forecast of key meteorological elements for the Winter Olympics in complex terrain, meeting the event support conditions.

9

Besides work pressure, what else do Winter Olympics meteorologists experience?

The 2022 Winter Olympics is special in that related work must strictly follow the requirements of epidemic prevention. For this reason, a considerable number of Winter Olympics meteorological staff have entered a closed-loop management phase of long-term separation from their families since the end of October. This period is expected to last nearly six months. They will stick to the front line of forecasting services, accompany the ice and snow, spend the Chinese New Year, and spend more than a hundred long days and nights.

There are many more meteorological workers working hard and making contributions in different positions for the success of the Winter Olympics. Their dedication and sacrifice are all for presenting a wonderful "ice and snow event" to the world.

There are still 50 days left, looking forward to it!

Produced by China Meteorological News Agency

Author: Duan Haoshu, an all-media reporter from China Meteorological News Agency

Editor: Ting Nan

Review: Duan Haoshu