Participants to the forthcoming APEC activities next week in Shanghai can expect one of the world's best weather forecast services ever.

That's because the first trial of a new numerical weather report that provides definite current temperature, precipitation and the wind movement began in Shanghai Wednesday.

This practice will avail the public of timely and specific numerical weather figures for 10 locations including the Shanghai International Conference Center, the city's two airports, the People's Square and selected scenic sites.

The report interval has been shortened to every three hours from every six hours, said Gu Jianfeng, chief expert in the Numerical Weather Prediction Lab of the Shanghai Super Computer Center under the Municipal Meteorological Bureau.

The coverage area for the report has been shrunk to a 3-square-kilometer section, which means Shanghai's 6,400 square kilometers will have 700 different specific weather data sections, Gu said.

In the 1960s, forecasters could gather weather data for a 300-square-kilometer region, a figure brought down to 37.5 square kilometers by 1998.

The new numerical weather forecast is one of the most advanced predictive measurements in the world, capable of describing the air movements with a set of very complicated mathematics equations.

Weather forecasts in this method are derived by calculating several factors on a highly reliable and speedy computer.

Shanghai's computer system is called SWI and can make 400 billion calculations per second, Gu claimed.

The United States is most advanced in this field, improving weather forecasting for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics to a 2-square-kilometer section.

(China Daily 10/11/2001)