20 years of meteorological inquiry: from scratch to serving the world
On June 1, 2002, the National Space Weather Monitoring and Early Warning Center (hereinafter referred to as the "Space Weather Center") was established, which is the first time in the history of my country's space weather business development.
Today, 20 years later, the Space Weather Center celebrates its 20th anniversary.
After 20 years of construction, my country has basically established a space weather business system that integrates monitoring, forecasting and service. It has initially built a space weather monitoring system that combines space and earth, and formed a standardized forecasting and early warning business based on quantitative forecasting. The benefits of application services have become increasingly significant. And constantly open up new application areas.
The "integration of heaven and earth" monitoring network takes the pulse of the sun——
From scratch to autonomous observation
11 C-class small flares, 6 M-class medium flares, and accompanying coronal mass ejections... On March 28 this year, Fengyun-3E star known as "Dawn Star" clearly recorded this round of solar eruptions.
Every time a flare process occurs, the sun releases a large amount of electromagnetic waves to the earth, the energy of which is comparable to that of tens of thousands or even more nuclear bombs at the same time, and the energy generated by coronal mass ejection is far more than this.
"Flares and coronal mass ejections will also trigger Earth's space storms, affecting many fields such as aerospace, aviation, navigation, communications, and energy," said Zhang Xiaoxin, a researcher at the Space Weather Center. "The seven Fengyun series meteorological satellites currently in orbit can detect The ability and accuracy have been greatly improved, and the space-based monitoring network for space weather has been woven."
The hour hand is set back to one year ago.
On September 2, 2021, my country's first high-precision, multi-band solar images captured in space by the Fengyun-3E star were officially released.
The "photographer" of these images is the X-EUV imager, the solar imaging observation instrument carried by star E. This is also the first time in the world that the two bands of X-ray and extreme ultraviolet have been integrated on the same instrument to monitor the solar corona. activities, capture the eruption process of solar storms, etc., so as to give early warning to the impact of solar activities in aerospace, communication and navigation and other fields.
This is epoch-making progress.
The Fengyun-3E star and the Fengyun-4B star carrying space weather monitoring loads such as the electromagnetic environment, ionospheric weather and solar activity information around the geostationary orbit are "double-star combination", making my country's first realization of the explosion from the sun to the earth Autonomous monitoring of the "whole process" of the space environment response.
However, as early as the beginning of the space weather business of the China Meteorological Administration, the space environment monitoring instruments carried by Fengyun Meteorological Satellites were only to ensure the safety of the satellites themselves.
Since the launch of the Fengyun-3A satellite in 2008, space environment monitoring data and products have been truly applied to space weather forecasting services.
Compared with space-based monitoring, 20 years ago, ground-based monitoring was even more blank.
At that time, the Meridian project was still in the design stage, and its first-phase detection plan had almost no detection equipment in the southeastern coastal areas and central and western regions of my country.
Today, my country has built solar, ionospheric and high-altitude atmospheric observation stations in 15 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), initially formed the "three belts and six regions" ground-based space weather professional network layout, and the comprehensive monitoring capability has reached the domestic leading level; nearly 1,000 The ionospheric TEC monitoring data provided by these GPS observation stations have been incorporated into the space weather business of the China Meteorological Administration, forming an internationally leading regional ionospheric business monitoring capability.
It is expected that by the end of 2025, space weather ground-based monitoring stations will cover 20 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities); in the 2035 vision plan, further nationwide coverage will be achieved.
Looking back, Wang Jinsong, director of the Space Weather Center, expressed a lot of emotion: "This is a space weather monitoring pattern that has spanned 20 years, and the integration of space and earth has provided autonomous and controllable observation data for my country's space weather business. The future is more promising.”
Building a "ballast stone" for space activities——
From toddler to serving the world
At around 9:30 on April 20, an M7-level flare erupted on the sun, and the Space Weather Center immediately organized a consultation and judgment. It is expected that the sun may still have a flare in a short period of time in the future.
Around 12:00, as expected, a large X-class flare erupted from the sun, causing short-wave absorption in the ionosphere in most areas of my country, and causing some short-wave communications to be interrupted.
As the on-duty center of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Global Space Weather Center, the Space Weather Center quickly launched the third-level response, and issued the ICAO Space Weather Advisory Report to relevant ICAO organizations and business systems through the Civil Aviation Meteorological Center.
This is the first time that China has issued a space weather advisory report since it became the duty center, and it is also a practice of serving the world since my country as the fourth global space weather center was put into operation on November 16, 2021.
According to Xu Xianghua, deputy director of the International Cooperation Department of the China Meteorological Administration, the completion of the Global Space Weather Center has enabled my country to stand on the same starting line with developed countries in Europe and the United States, and has the ability to deeply participate in international space weather-related affairs.
From serving my country to serving the world, the support behind it is the increasingly mature monitoring and forecasting business.
Over the past 20 years, drawing on the experience of weather forecasting, the China Meteorological Administration has formed a space weather forecast and early warning business based on quantitative forecasts. The number of officially released forecast products has reached 24, and the forecast accuracy of disastrous space weather events is comparable to the international level.
Walking thousands of miles, time remembers all the roads.
At about 21:19 on September 25, 2008, as the "Shenzhou VII" manned spacecraft entered the scheduled orbit, the "Space Weather Bulletin - "Shenzhou VII" Space Weather Service" issued by the Space Weather Center was also published within 15 minutes. It was released quickly, and it recorded the specific time period from the entry of "Shenzhou VII" into orbit to the advance of orbit control and out of the South Atlantic anomaly area with strong space radiation, and was sent to the Beijing Space Flight Control Center.
"As of October 29, 2016, the level of solar activity is low, and the possibility of flares above M class is low..." The "Tiangong-2" launch mission began, including space debris collisions, upper atmospheric drag, high-energy charged particles, and the ionosphere Space weather events including disturbances are analyzed one by one, and the space weather report continues after its perfect liftoff.
Today, my country's meteorological work has gradually formed an application service framework focusing on decision-making services, professional services, public services and user training. , ionospheric environment forecasting, space environment monitoring and early warning of in-orbit satellites and other research and development and service capabilities, successful in a series of important space activities space weather support services, and continue to expand the service field, for aerospace, aviation, navigation, communications, ground long-distance Pipe network and other professional users to carry out services.
Running out of "acceleration" for the future——
Effectively improve space weather operational capabilities by 2025
Not long ago, the State Council issued the "Outline for High-Quality Development of Meteorology (2022-2035)", which draws a blueprint for the development of space weather business by 2035 - a unified layout according to relevant plans to build a space weather observation network; develop solar storms, earth Monitoring, forecasting and early warning of space weather disasters such as space storms, and strengthening the capacity building of space weather centers.
20 years of struggle and exploration have accumulated a lot of experience, but also showed some shortcomings and weaknesses: there is still a lack of observation in some key spectrum bands of the sun, interplanetary space detection is still blank, the observation network has not yet achieved nationwide coverage, and global monitoring capabilities are still relatively low Limited; forecast elements have not yet covered the entire space weather chain, and the numerical forecast system has not yet been established; professional services have gaps in quantification and refinement, and public services have yet to be fully developed; the talent team system is not enough to support the refined division of labor.
And these deficiencies will also become the driving force for the Space Weather Center to "accelerate" in the future.
On May 27, the China Meteorological Administration issued the "Space Weather Operational Capability Improvement Work Plan (2022-2025)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"), which clearly stated that by 2025, it will be marked by "precise monitoring, accurate forecasting, and fine service". The space weather business capability of China has been effectively improved, a "full-time, multi-element, multi-domain" space weather business system has been built, the space weather observation capabilities of space-earth coordination and global coverage have been improved, and the first-generation "full-link" sun-earth space has been built. The weather numerical forecast business system has formed a professional service platform for the aerospace and aviation fields, and has reached the international advanced level as a whole.
Focusing on improving basic monitoring capabilities, the "Plan" proposes four specific tasks, including improving space weather monitoring planning and design capabilities, improving space weather observation networks, improving the quality of space weather basic data products, and building space weather datasets.
Focusing on improving the ability of refined space weather forecast and early warning, the "Plan" proposes to build a first-generation space weather numerical forecast business system to improve the rapid release of space weather early warning information, and the accuracy of short-term (0-12 hours) and short-term (72 hours) space weather. Forecast, medium and long-term (4-30 days) accurate prediction of space weather, quantitative prediction of space climate change, and the application of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data.
In order to improve space weather service capabilities, the "Plan" clarifies that it is necessary to give full play to the effectiveness of the global space weather center, strengthen comprehensive analysis and decision-making services, improve industry service levels, and strengthen space weather science popularization.
Focusing on strengthening scientific and technological innovation capabilities, the "Plan" points out that it will strengthen the research on the impact of solar activity on climate change, carry out research on space weather monitoring technology and monitoring data application, build a space weather numerical prediction test platform, and develop space weather disaster prevention and mitigation theory and technology. Research and strengthen the construction of key laboratories for space weather, and improve the standard system for space weather monitoring and early warning.
The blueprint has been drawn, and it's time to accelerate!
(Beijing, June 1, our reporter, Cui Xingyi, our correspondent, Wang Suqin)