Shanghai, the largest city in east China, became the first in the country to provide 72-hour weather forecasts on TV Saturday night.
Compared with the former 24-hour forecasts, the new service will enable Shanghai citizens to be informed about the city's weather and air temperatures for three days ahead.
The move will better serve city residents and meet their demands for more accurate weather forecasting, according to Xu Yiming, a local meteorology official.
The new service will also encourage China's meteorology sector at large to extend its time frames for weather forecasts, requiring more data from radars and satellites and weather system analysis on a broader scale, Xu says.
(Xinhua News Agency February 22, 2003)
