Chinese meteorological authorities promised on Monday, June 12, a timely and accurate weather forecast service for the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

Qin Dahe, top official of China Meteorological Administration (CMA), vowed in a televised conference to provide a more accurate forecast in Beijing and Qingdao, two host cities of the 2008 summer Olympics.

He said at least two drillings would be launched to check all the preparations before the Games' opening.

One will be held this July, and the next is scheduled for next summer. "CMA will find out the best solutions to further improve weather services and make sure what countermeasures can be taken to deal with emergencies probably to be caused by extremely weather changes during the games," he said.

In the month-long exercise in July, priorities will be given to weather changes and consequences, with impacts on the Games assessed, Qin said.

Meanwhile, early warning for disastrous weather changes like hailstorm and heavy fog and measures to mitigate their adverse impacts will be assessed during this drilling.

Qin said, to ensure the success of the Games, meteorological authorities will monitor weather and climate changes along with changes of local environment like ultraviolet radiation and acid rain that may have affect them more or less.

"During the drilling, we should have worked out precautionary schemes against emergencies like communication problems caused by hackers or blackout of power supply and consequent errors affecting forecasting system operation," he said.

Relying on powerful supercomputers and a digital radar network, a new comprehensive meteorological system is scheduled to perform remote measurements and remote sensing automatically and continuously in Beijing and Qingdao by then.

Many high-tech equipments are scheduled to be put into full operation during the Beijing 2008 Olympics including Doppler radar network and wind-profiler to monitor weather changes and climate tendency towards bad weather, said Wang Bangzhong, deputy director of the Forecasting Services and Disaster Mitigation Department of CMA.

He made it clear that, with these networks and systems, they hope to secure "a seamless weather forecast for the Beijing 2008 Olympics."