Newsletter Issue 57 (July 2025)

HK Meteorological Society Talk Series 2025 – Understanding Weather and Climate Change through Simulation and Monitoring

Date/Time: 19 August 2025, 14:00 – 15:00
Venue: Lecture Theatre H, HKUST
Application via https://forms.gle/fTVhpwNTxspLvR8P8
This will be followed by a 1-hour visit to (1) HK’s Largest Liquid Immersion Cooling System and (2) Sustainable Smart Campus as a Living Lab – Identify Butterfly Species with AI Camera.

The weather of June 2025 – A hot and relatively dry June

The weather of June 2025 was hotter and drier than usual in Hong Kong, mainly attributing to the stronger subtropical ridge covering southeastern China. The monthly mean minimum temperature, monthly mean maximum temperature and monthly mean temperature were 0.6 degrees, 0.8 degrees and 0.6 degrees above their corresponding normals. With all six months drier than usual, the accumulated rainfall recorded in the first half of the year was about 41 percent of the normal.

Global Climate Report – June 2025 was third warmest on record

June 2025 recorded the third-highest June global surface temperature in NOAA’s 176-year record, which dates back to 1850. The temperature anomaly for June 2025 was 0.98°C higher than the 20th-century average. This June was cooler than June 2023 (second warmest) and June 2024 (warmest). All ten warmest Junes on record have occurred since 2016, and June 2025 extended the streak of consecutive Junes with above-average global temperatures to 49 years.June 2025 recorded the third-highest June global surface temperature in NOAA’s 176-year record, which dates back to 1850. The temperature anomaly for June 2025 was 0.98°C higher than the 20th-century average. This June was cooler than June 2023 (second warmest) and June 2024 (warmest). All ten warmest Junes on record have occurred since 2016, and June 2025 extended the streak of consecutive Junes with above-average global temperatures to 49 years.

UN report: Renewable energy makes economic sense
A new UN special report highlights how far the world has come in renewable energy since the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2015 sparked a clean energy revolution. “Renewables already nearly match fossil fuels in global installed power capacity. And that’s just the beginning. Last year, almost all the new power capacity built came from renewables. Every continent on Earth added more renewables capacity than fossil fuels. And renewables generated almost a third of global electricity,” said UN Secretary-General Mr António Guterres.

World’s Longest Climate Record at Risk as US Plans to Defund Mauna Loa Observatory

The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, home to the world’s longest continuous record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, is facing an uncertain future. As part of proposed budget cuts by the Trump administration for the fiscal year 2026, the US NOAA may be forced to halt critical climate monitoring operations at the site.

From sea to sky: Microsoft’s Aurora AI foundation model goes beyond weather forecasting

(AI summary by DeepSeek) This study compares five MLWP models (Pangu-Weather, FCN2, GraphCast, FuXi, FengWu) against ECMWF’s IFS. FengWu led typhoon track predictions; IFS excelled in intensity (higher resolution). MLWP models, using ERA5 data, matched IFS accuracy efficiently. Challenges include resolution limits. Future priorities: high-resolution AI models (e.g., MSCAR), multi-model ensembles, and AI-meteorology collaboration for extreme weather forecasting.

2025世界人工智慧大會氣象專會在滬召開

7月26日，2025世界人工智慧大會氣象專會在上海召開，26個國家（地區）以及來自世界氣象組織、聯合國減少災害風險辦公室、國際電信聯盟、紅十字會與紅新月會國際聯合會等國際組織的代表齊聚一堂，探索人工智慧賦能全民早期預警，分享技術經驗，提升預警效能。WMO秘書長表示，中國早期預警工作是全球典範，形成’政府主導、預警先行、部門聯動、社會參與”的氣象早期預警“中國模式’，展現了精準預報預警和應急回應的無縫銜接。

空間天氣鏈式AI預報模型“風宇”發佈

為應對太陽風暴對全球衛星運行、無線電通信、衛星導航定位及其他關鍵基礎設施的影響，由國家衛星氣象中心（國家空間天氣監測預警中心）牽頭，聯合南昌大學、華為技術有限公司共同研發的全球首個空間天氣鏈式人工智慧預報模型的“風宇”面向空間天氣保障需求，突破了傳統數值模型在算力消耗與即時回應方面的技術瓶頸，成為國際首個覆蓋太陽風、磁層、電離層全鏈條的空間天氣人工智慧預報模型。

中國氣象局發佈全民早期預警中國方案“媽祖(MAZU)”

為攜手縮小早期預警能力差距，中國氣象局發佈全民早期預警中國方案“MAZU”(代表多災種Multi-hazard、預警Alert、零差距Zero-gap和普惠Universal)，與全球特別是發展中國家分享中國經驗和技術成果，提供早期預警技術、聯合開展能力建設、共建風險識別與評估體系、創新合作機制與模式等。在經驗方面，分享遞進式氣象服務、高級別預警“叫應”等早期預警實踐；並與各國共建城市工具箱、風雲地球工具箱、海外設備等氣象早期預警業務平台。(更多)

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