On February 13, 2022, it snowed heavily in Beijing. The freestyle ski slope obstacle course at the Beijing Winter Olympics scheduled for the morning was cancelled, and the alpine ski women's downhill was postponed.
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics Freestyle Ski Women's Steeplechase Qualification Tournament, which was originally scheduled to be held on February 13, was postponed to February 14
This is not the first time that the Winter Olympics have been rescheduled. On February 6, the alpine skiing men's downhill competition, which was scheduled to start at 11:00, was also postponed three times, from 11:00 to 12:00, then 13:00 and 14:00, and finally the competition was postponed to 12:00 on the 7th.
In fact, "event postponement" is not a new thing in the history of the Winter Olympics. In the past 23 Winter Olympic Games, only 4 Winter Olympic Games have not had any events postponed or cancelled due to weather reasons, while the remaining 19 games have more or less had competitions postponed, postponed or even cancelled due to the lack of relevant meteorological conditions at the time of the game.
How to say a good schedule, or change?
The Winter Olympics and the weather, love and kill each other
Compared with the Summer Olympics, the Winter Olympics have more events outdoors, so they are more affected by the weather.
Snowfall, temperature, wind direction, wind speed, visibility... These meteorological elements are closely related to the schedule, competition results, and especially the safety of athletes' lives.
When the sky is not beautiful, it is necessary to deal with bad weather in time to ensure the safety of athletes. Correspondingly, the schedule of the competition will change somewhat instantaneously. Alpine skiing, for example, must stop racing as soon as the wind speed on the track exceeds 18 m/s.
In the Winter Olympic service team, including a professional weather forecast team. During the Winter Olympics, regardless of whether the wind and snow affect the event, the most important task for forecasters is to make a fine weather forecast so that the Winter Olympic Organizing Committee can take corresponding countermeasures according to the accurate weather forecast. Race or not? Where to race? What time is the race? Their forecasts are pivotal.
Compared with the daily weather forecast,
What is the difference between the fine weather forecast for the Winter Olympics?
In the daily weather forecast, we often hear "local area". For example, in the Yanqing area of Beijing, there are wind and snow in some areas, but there are blizzards in the other part of the area, and the text expression of the weather forecast is: "Affected by cold air, there will be wind and snow in the Yanqing area of Beijing in the next three days, and there will be blizzards in some areas."
Due to the limitations of monitoring technology and forecasting technology, the smaller the range of weather forecasts, the more difficult it is. At present, although the mainland has been able to achieve fixed-point forecasting, the spatial resolution is only 3 kilometers, and the individual developed areas have reached 1 kilometer, but such spatial resolution is not enough to support the weather forecast of each small place (such as Tiananmen Square, national stadium) and other local areas.
Therefore, in a major event such as the Olympic Games, which is of national and even worldwide concern, a more professional forecast service will be made according to the time and place of the event: refined weather forecasting.
For example, for the winter Olympic weather forecast, the "100-meter level, minute-level" forecast was launched: the space covers the 100-meter grid of the Winter Olympics area, which is updated every ten minutes. With this kind of forecast, such as in the alpine skiing range of 2.5 km × 2.25 km mountain field, forecasters can make very accurate weather forecasts and services for wind speed, wind direction and temperature at different altitudes, tracks and different areas.
The Fengyun satellites are all in unison
To make detailed forecasts, it is inseparable from fine data support. The reason why the weather forecast of the Winter Olympics can be so fine is due to the "multi-dimensional meteorological comprehensive three-dimensional and encrypted meteorological observation network" behind it, including the high-density meteorological observation instruments installed in the arena, the weather radar for wind and cloud measurement, and the meteorological satellites in the sky; as the load carried by meteorological satellites becomes more and more advanced, modern refined weather forecasting can finally be truly realized.
Fengyun Satellite Family 丨National Satellite Meteorological Center
Behind the Beijing Winter Olympics, there is such a group of hard-core science and technology volunteers, their name is "Fengyun Meteorological Satellite". At present, 19 Fengyun meteorological satellites have been launched, playing a huge role in disaster prevention and mitigation and climate change.
The photo above is a group photo of the Fengyun satellite family. Among them, the Fengyun-4 satellite mainly conducts real-time dynamic monitoring for the development and evolution of atmospheric clouds, and Fengyun-3 can do surface temperature, snow and other monitoring, which is a very concerned information for weather forecasting.
Figure丨 National Satellite Meteorological Center
It is worth mentioning that one of them is the Fengyun III A star (FY-3A), and there is also an alias called "Olympic Star". It was "born" in May 2008, and it is also the first satellite to serve the Olympic Games, and during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, it played an important role in monitoring typhoons, heavy rains, Qingdao seaweed outbreaks, etc., and also contributed to the protection of outdoor competitions such as equestrian and sailing.
Cartoon image of Fengyun-3 satellite 丨Methos Press
However, this Winter Olympics, Fengyun No. 3 A star has long been retired. Now on the battlefield are the 8 Wind Cloud Stars in the Chinese meteorological satellite family that are still in orbit. In particular, the patrolman "polar orbit satellite" Fengyun 3D (FY-3D) and the fixed guard "geostationary satellite" Fengyun 4A (FY-4A) and 4B (FY-4B) (hereinafter referred to as 3D stars, 4A stars and 4B stars) that rotate every day are also the first-line main stars of the Winter Olympics.
On the eve of the start of the Winter Olympics, the 3D star, the 4A star and the Fengyun-2 H star (FY-2H) also accepted another glorious mission: officially becoming the duty satellite of the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters. However, due to the relatively low resolution of time and space, the 2H star did not become the main star of the Winter Olympic service this time.
To achieve high goals, there must be "good weapons". On the Fengyun satellite, there are many good weapons. Take the Fengyun-4 satellite as an example——
The vertical detector carried in the figure is currently the only vertical detector carried by the international geostationary satellite, that is to say, at present, in the geostationary orbit of 36,000 altitudes, only our Chinese Fengyun-4 satellite is equipped with this instrument. It can do a "three-dimensional CT" for the atmosphere, by detecting large temperature and humidity profile information that is difficult to capture, indicating which areas will occur in the short term in the future and other extreme weather such as strong convection.
In addition, the fast imager mounted on the Fengyun 4B star has a maximum visible light resolution of 250 meters, which is 1 times higher than that of the imager of the A star; the spatial resolution, detection sensitivity and detection accuracy of the loads such as the radiation imager and the interferometric infrared detector enable the B star to accurately perceive the temperature change of the Earth's atmosphere of 0.05 degrees Celsius at a distance of 36,000 kilometers, and the deviation of the detection result from the true value is less than 0.5 degrees Celsius.
These are the "killer skills" of the Fengyun-4 B star, which can achieve higher spatio-temporal resolution, higher detection sensitivity and higher quantification accuracy, and together with the polar orbit brother satellites to provide data raw materials for refined numerical forecasting, which is the basis of modern fine forecasting.
Of course, each star has its own "little star thinking", and they are trying to share the meteorological data, wind and cloud videos and satellite cloud maps they recorded and collected during the Beijing Winter Olympics to those who need weather forecasts and other needs, and make a contribution to the Winter Olympics.
When you enjoy the competition or reminisce about the wonderful moments of this Beijing Winter Olympics, don't forget that there is a special group of hardcore science and technology volunteers in the sky, they are called Fengyun Satellite.
Author: Cao Jing
Editor: Malt Yang
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