Abstract
Under the relentless pace of population growth and urban development, weather and climate services provided by the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) since its establishment in 1883 have been evolving continuously with an increasing focus on the delivery of tailored information to meet the needs of special users and various stakeholders in the community. With meteorological observations at the headquarters of the Observatory dating back more than 130 years to 1884, the advent of automatic weather station network in the mid-1980s has significantly expanded the data coverage both in terms of spatial and temporal resolution. The establishment of the Community Weather Information Network in 2007 further extended the meteorological measurement to the school and community levels. Regular upper air soundings and the increasing availability of remote-sensing observations also enable the monitoring of meteorological parameters beyond the near-surface levels through the depth of the atmosphere. By integrating comprehensive weather observations and numerical weather prediction products, HKO now provides a wide range of forecasts covering multi-time scales and warnings and advisories for high-impact weather such as tropical cyclone, thunderstorm, heavy rain, landslide, flooding, and cold and very hot weather. Riding on the advances in communication technology in recent decades, members of the public have gained improved access to the latest weather warnings, advisories, weather information, and forecast for the next couple of hours to 9 days ahead, as well as forecasts near users’ locations through HKO’s website and mobile app. In addition to information for public consumption, HKO’s services and products have been tailored in support of weather-sensitive operations such as those provided to users in the aviation and marine communities. In the process of such diversified development, HKO has successfully cultivated close partnerships with various stakeholders to enhance its weather and climate services by embracing the spirit of the Big Data and smart city concept in recent years, in particular in areas related to energy, water, health, and disaster risk reduction. In this paper, a review of the weather and climate services focusing on the urban aspects in Hong Kong will be presented, with examples illustrating specific applications in different sectors. Future thrusts in enhancing and integrating the urban weather and climate services for Hong Kong in the Big Data era under the Climate Friendly Demonstration City initiative and impact-based forecast approach promulgated by the World Meteorological Organization will also be discussed.
Highlights
With more than half of the global population living in cities, the United Nations adopted the New Urban Agenda in 2016 to set a new global standard and roadmap for sustainable urban development, including the actions to address climate change and strengthen theLee et al Geosci
While Hong Kong has a total area of about 1104 km2, owing to its mountainous topography with steep slopes over 20% of the total land area, most of the urban activities are concentrated on built-up areas that take up about 24% of land (DEVB and PlanD 2017)
Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) plans to collaborate with academia and other stakeholders (e.g., Community Weather Information Network (Co-WIN)) to conduct a pilot project to develop a new experimental real-time urban weather monitoring system which is suitable for the climate and high-density urban environment of Hong Kong (Fig. 8)
Summary
Weather and climate monitoring in Hong Kong (a) Long‐term observations at HKO since 1884 With the setting up of its first observational post-way back in 1883, HKO has been making various meteorological measurements for over 130 years at its headquarters (Lee 2016) It is one of the WMO recognized Centennial Observing Stations (WMO station code: 45005) in Asia with over a century of continuous observations of essential surface meteorological observations, such as temperatures, rainfall, pressure, and relative humidity (HKO 2017b). Long-term variations of various meteorological elements and indices, such as temperature, rainfall, sea level, tropical cyclone frequency, and extreme weather events, are conducted to assess the climate change in Hong Kong due to global warming and local urbanizations (Lee et al 2010b; Wong et al 2011; Chan et al 2012).
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