China has issued the ‘Action Plan on Early Warning for Climate Change Adaptation (2025-2027)’, which includes launching three geostationary meteorological satellites to provide high-frequency meteorological disaster monitoring and cloud early warning systems for African, Asian and Pacific countries.
The plan was announced on November 12 at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, when China held a high-level conference on ‘Strengthening Early Warning and Building a Future for Climate Adaptation’.
China’s four-pronged climate-adaptive plan
The plan clarifies China’s key implementation actions into four actions – sharing risk census and assessment knowledge, building monitoring platforms, sharing best practices for climate-adaptive social construction, and enhancing capabilities for early warning systems in developing countries.
As part of the first action, China says it plans to systematically provide knowledge and tools for climate risk census and assessments. This is intended to support the UNDRR’s National Early Warning Initiative’s goal of spreading disaster risk knowledge. At present, China has carried out a national comprehensive natural disaster risk census and climate change impact assessment. The country is willing to share this insight with the international community the technical standards, operational processes, knowledge management and application practices in risk census and assessment, in order to help developing countries better understand and assess their climate risks and formulate effective adaptation strategies.
The second action is to jointly build a climate risk monitoring, forecasting and early warning platform. China has stated it will commit to enhancing the ability of disaster monitoring, forecasting and early warning, and supporting the improvement of the ability of Early Warnings For All initiative Pillar 2: ‘Detection, monitoring, analysis and forecasting of hazards’ and Pillar 3: ‘Warning dissemination and communication’. In the next two years, China intends to launch three geostationary meteorological satellites to provide high-frequency meteorological disaster monitoring for African, Asian and Pacific countries. This is to share early warning technology with developing countries and cooperate with developing countries to build a cloud early warning system.
The third aspect of the action plan is sharing best practices for climate-adaptive social construction. China plans to share policies, measures and good practices in grassroots disaster prevention and mitigation, emergency response and the construction of climate-adapted cities, including relevant laws and regulations on disaster prevention, emergency plans and practical cases of community disaster prevention and reduction. This is to promote the establishment of an urban climate change adaptation partnership. This aspect of the action plan, along with the ‘Preparedness to respond’ pillar of the Early Warnings For All initiative, is to provide reference for other developing countries to resist climate disasters and prevent climate risks.
The country will also jointly promote the improvement of the early warning capacity of developing countries. China has stated that it will develop and implement the ‘South-South cooperation‘ early warning project in response to climate change; provide meteorological observation equipment and cloud early warning systems to relevant developing countries free of charge; and provide short-term training, relevant professional scholarships and long-term visiting scholars for developing countries in the fields of early warning, risk assessment, climate change and other fields. Funds will promote transnational experience exchange and technological innovation and help developing countries to cultivate talents that will improve their ability to cope with climate change and avert disasters.
Cloud early warning systems
This action plan builds on a previous agreement between the China Meteorological Administration, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and the World Meteorological Organization. This Tripartite Cooperation Agreement, signed in 2023, supports the United Nations Early Warning Initiative for All. As part of this agreement, the CMA jointly developed a cloud early warning system with the meteorological departments of Ethiopia and Pakistan, and initially built an early warning business platform for developing countries or regions.
On April 30, 2024, Sohail Babar Cheema and Syed Zeeshan Haider, experts from the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), concluded a three-week joint research and development work at the CMA and returned to Pakistan. The joint development work by CMA and PMD resulted in an Early Warning Supporting System tailored for Pakistan. The system features a cloud-based open platform and toolbox series covering local information access, NWP models, AI models, severe weather identification algorithms and early warning information dissemination, enabling swift and effective tracking of meteorological disasters. Upon the established framework, the toolboxes are configurable and accessible for further customization by users.
During their stay in China, the PMD experts engaged in discussions with CMA counterparts and through these interactions, the PMD experts gained a deep understanding of CMA’s meteorological services. They learned how Fengyun meteorological satellites and NWP models could be used for weather forecasting and climate prediction, how to employ a color-coded warning system to identify different levels of meteorological disasters, and how to disseminate weather forecasts to the public through various media channels, including the English website and overseas social media platforms, thereby enhancing global understanding of the UN’s Early Warnings For All Initiative.
The CMA team continued its collaboration with PMD throughout 2024, focusing on the localized application of the system in Pakistan. A dedicated training class on the Integrated Cloud-based Early Warning Supporting System was conducted in July 2024.
In related news, at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the WMO has convened a top-level event on the UN secretary-general’s Early Warnings for All (EW4All) initiative, which has expanded to 30 more countries through 14 more projects. Click here to read the full story.