Visit to China Meteorological Administration
Published: Thursday, August 16, 2012
After our International Sales Meeting in Penang, Malaysia Kipp & Zonen Business Managers Clive Lee and Ruud Ringoir visited the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) at their headquarters in Beijing and at their research centre and BSRN station in Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia. The visit was organized with considerable help from Joe Zhou, General Manager of our Chinese distributor Beijing Techno Solutions Ltd.
CMA has a large quantity of Kipp & Zonen products and requested this visit to discuss calibration, specifications, international standards and instrument specific questions. On Sunday 14th of November in Beijing presentations were made about Kipp & Zonen and our products, and more specifically about individual instruments and their calibrations. Beijing had blue skies, a light dusting of snow and temperatures around freezing - a contrast to the +30 °C monsoon conditions in Penang!
The next day we traveled with Joe Zhou and three CMA people to their meteorological centre in Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia. There were a lot of discussions to inform them about installation, maintenance, data management and quality control.
The main measurement station is located 1 hour drive outside the city in flat tundra. The 360 degree clear view and uniform landscape makes it an ideal location for measuring radiation. The temperatures were between -20 °C and -25 °C with strong wind, making inspections of the instruments a chilly experience.
A 2AP sun tracker with shading ball assembly is fitted with a CHP 1 pyrheliometer to measure the direct radiation and ventilated CMP 21 pyranometers for global and diffuse measurement. A ventilated CGR 4 measures the downwards infrared radiation. Alongside the tracker is a short mast with a UVS-AB-T and a PAR Lite, for UVA, UVB and Photosynthetically Active Radiation.
A suitable distance away to avoid shadows is a 30 m mast with downwards facing CMP 21 and CGR 4 for reflected radiation and upwards infrared. This means that all four net radiation components are measured and albedo can be calculated. There is also a fully instrumented 200 m high meteorological tower that includes a CNR 1 net radiometer. With the addition of ventilation units to the downwards facing radiometers the site will comply with the requirements for an Extended Baseline Surface Radiation Network Station (BSRN).
A few hundred meters from the measurement site is a building used to collect and analyse the data. Beijing Techno Solutions carried out the installation, provided the data loggers, and developed software to graphically display all the parameters on a large LCD screen.