Photo: IC

The China-Russia Consortium (CRC) space weather center was established in Beijing on Tuesday, a move to accelerate the development of meteorological services for international civil aviation and enhance China's international influence in the sector, according to the China Meteorological Administration (CMA).

By cooperating with Russia to take part in international affairs and fulfill international duties, China will raise its international influence in the sector of space weather aviation services, Yu Rucong, deputy director of CMA said.

It is hoped that the two sides will further cooperate in data sharing, product integration and forecast verification to provide more accurate and practical products and services to global civil aviation users, Yu noted.

The center is jointly established and operated by the China Meteorological Administration, the Civil Aviation Administration of China and the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring. It is the first global center approved by the International Civil Aviation Organization in Chinese civil aviation meteorology and also the fourth global space weather center.

Space weather matters for high-tech systems like satellite operation, human health, and especially for aviation safety and communication, positioning and tracking. Meanwhile, the reliability of avionics might be seriously disrupted by space weather. 

China's meteorological authorities have initially built the main framework of the national-level space weather operational mechanism with the capacity to monitor the whole process of the solar-terrestrial spatial causal chain, the administration said. The country has the capability to make long-, medium- and short-term forecasts, and the accuracy of space weather prediction is comparable to the international level.

The CMA started space weather tests in the late 1990s. In 2002, the country approved the establishment of the National Space Weather Monitoring and Early Warning Center which was officially put into operation in 2004. 

In 2012, the related authorities began preparations for the development of aerospace weather services. China and Russia jointly applied for the regional space weather center in 2018 and the CRC center was approved in 2020.