On February 13th, Genting Ski Park in Zhangjiakou Division ushered in a day full of "variables". The freestyle skiing women's slope obstacle skills qualification and women's aerial skills qualification competition, which gathered many key players, were rescheduled one after another. Gu Ailing, Yang Shuorui, Xu Mengtao, Kong Fanyu and Shao Qi are tentatively scheduled to appear tomorrow.
Why is a Winter Olympics-level game rescheduled?
In fact, "weather" is a topic that cannot be avoided in the Winter Olympics, especially for snow sports, which account for 70% of the total.
According to public data, before the Beijing Winter Olympics, only 4 of the past 23 Winter Olympics did not have any events postponed or canceled due to weather, while the remaining 19 Winter Olympics had more or less events due to the weather. It was adjusted when the relevant weather conditions were not met during the race.
The degree of influence of weather on snow sports can be seen from the rumor in the "Jianghu" of ice and snow sports: "Snow sports that have not experienced delays are incomplete."
"From this morning to noon, the amount of snowfall in the Genting stadium complex is about 2 mm. It is expected that there will be 3-5 mm of snowfall in the future, and the snowfall will continue until the night." Ma Liangchen, chief of the Zhangjiakou Weather Center of the Winter Olympics, is accepting In an exclusive interview, a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily said that according to the feedback from the meteorological service guarantee personnel in front, the scene was affected by snowfall, and the visibility decreased significantly. It was about 10:00 a.m. when the game was first announced to be postponed.
"Visibility is generally around two or three hundred meters." The reporter observed near the starting area of the athletes and saw that the giant Olympic rings on the aerial skill field hundreds of meters away are clear and bright in daily life, but only have blurred outlines today.
The competition of slope obstacle skills is held on a track composed of various props and jumping platforms. During the competition, five referees will score the competition according to the height, turning, skill, and difficulty factor of the players passing through different obstacles.
The reduced visibility will not only affect the referee's sight, but also bring danger to the athletes, and is not conducive to the broadcast effect. Therefore, the adjustment of the schedule has become a necessary option.
For aerial skills, the wind factor is even more important.
According to Shu Wen, deputy director of logistics of the venue group operation team of Zhangjiakou Yunding Ski Park, although the distance between the two venues is only a few hundred meters, there is a height difference. The problem.
But this is a project that requires athletes to vacate and perform difficult movements. The wind is the focus of Ma Liangchen and his colleagues. "If the average wind speed is greater than 5 meters per second, it may have an impact on the competition and athletes." He said, In particular, the appearance of cross wind will interfere with the completion of the athletes' movements. Therefore, the wind forecast should not only be forecast hour by hour, but also be accurate to "how many meters per second".
The power of the wind is even more pronounced at the National Ski Jumping Center "Xue Ruyi".
As a traditional snow sport, ski jumping has no world records, only the best results. Because the wind speed, wind direction and other natural conditions of each ski jumping competition are different, it needs to be based on the specific weather and venue conditions on the day of the competition. To judge the best grades, the grades under other environmental conditions cannot be compared horizontally.
For example, in the scoring process of the ski jumping event, "wind speed score" occupies one of the items. If the athlete encounters a headwind, which is favorable for flying, points will be deducted; if the athlete encounters a tailwind and is unfavorable for flying, points will be added to achieve balance.
Therefore, snow sports athletes not only need to pick technical movements, but also learn to "look at the weather" is also very important.
In addition, according to Ma Liangchen, the temperature forecast focuses on the situation of "below minus 20 degrees Celsius", because the lower body temperature may affect athletes' performance, especially cross-country skiing and biathlon athletes.
The forecast of snowfall is an "early warning" for the operation of the venue.
Shu Wen said that because the snowfall forecast was received very early, the venue had already prepared a plan. "We started organizing staff to go to work to clear snow at 2:00 this morning, arrange traffic flow, etc., and the operation of the venue was not affected by the snowfall."
"In addition to providing weather forecast information hour by day every day, our information must be accurate to each track." Ma Liangchen revealed that in addition to different projects "value" different meteorological indicators, the complex topography of the Zhangjiakou competition area has also formed a significant local area. The characteristics of microclimate are simply "different days for ten miles".
The Zhangjiakou competition area will produce 51 of the 109 gold medals in this Winter Olympics, and its competition venues are all located in Chongli, which is located in the transition zone between the Inner Mongolia Plateau and the North China Plain. The altitude here ranges from 814 meters to 2174 meters. The average temperature in winter is about With a temperature of minus 12 degrees Celsius and a snow storage period of more than 150 days, it is the best choice for the Winter Olympics snow events.
"But every 100 meters of altitude difference, the meteorological environment is very different." Ma Liangchen said frankly that it is extremely difficult to accurately and accurately forecast the weather in the Zhangjiakou competition area, which is the most difficult in the previous Winter Olympics.
Taking the two tracks of Genting Ski Park as an example, the PARK C area where the aerial skills venue is located belongs to the sunny slope, and the temperature is usually slightly higher than that of the U-shaped venue and the PARK B where the slope obstacle skills track is located. The highest temperature during the day and the lowest temperature at night will be about two degrees Celsius lower than the sunny slope.” The walking distance between the two venues is only 600 to 700 meters.
At the same time, due to the construction of high-tech windproof nets in the U-shaped site, "the wind speed is usually lower than that of other sites".
The climate of the ancient poplar venues is also "different". The media shuttle bus between the three main competition venues can complete a cycle in less than 15 minutes. "The distance is very close, but the meteorological elements are very different." Ma Liangchen revealed that due to In the stadium design of "Xue Ruyi", the external building has a "weakening" effect on the wind inside the venue. "Its wind gusts are generally around five or six meters per second, and more often when it is less than 5 meters per second." But if on the same day For the same moment comparison, "gusts at the biathlon center and the cross-country ski center are likely to be around 10 m/s."
The huge difference brings the difficult problem of weather forecasting.
In order to solve the problem, starting from 2017, the China Meteorological Administration organized and coordinated 35 bone intervention reporters from Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia Meteorological Observatories and the Central Meteorological Observatory to form a forecast service team for the Zhangjiakou competition area of the Winter Olympics, as the deputy director of the Jilin Provincial Meteorological Observatory. , Ma Liangchen is also one of them.
They go to the core area of the event every winter to carry out intensive winter training for several months, study the problems of mountain weather forecasting, and are familiar with the Winter Olympics. The forecast accuracy rate of the Orsay area, "What we have to do is to provide reliable weather forecast information and provide a basis for decision-making by the arbitration committee."
In addition to the reserve of professional talents, "observing the clouds and measuring the wind" for the Winter Olympics is also inseparable from "black technology".
"Dense automatic weather stations are deployed on each track. Advanced equipment and instruments such as wind profiler radar, microwave radiometer, Doppler laser wind radar, three-dimensional ultrasonic wind direction anemometer, and UAV meteorological detection help us Accurate meteorological element monitoring at the 'minute-level, 100-meter level' has been achieved." Ma Liangchen recalled that before the Winter Olympics, there was almost no systematic observation, research and forecast for the venues in my country. "This is the Winter Olympics. The wealth that will be left to meteorologists, these skills and methods can be used in more winter projects in our country in the future."
Our newspaper, Chongli, Hebei, February 13th
China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily reporter Liang Xuan Source: China Youth Daily