China-Thai Joint Project on Extreme Events Kicked off

A kick-off meeting of China-Thailand joint research project “Mechanisms, impacts and future projections of the variations of rainfall extremes in Indochina Peninsula and southern China” (Project No. 41861144014) was held in Phuket from 28-29 Jan., 2019. The goal of the meeting was to start the collaborative work between Chinese and Thai scientists under the framework of the joint project and to provide a forum for sharing the research progress with each other. Project Chinese PI Prof. DUAN Anmin from the State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (LASG), the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAP, CAS), project Thai PI Dr. Chalump Oonariya from Thai Meteorological Department (TMD) and major team members attended this meeting. Experts from LASG/IAP, Beijing Normal University, Dalian Maritime University, and Sun Yat-sen University were invited to the meeting.

 Dr. Chalump Oonariya chaired the opening ceremony. He extended warm welcome to the Chinese delegation and expressed keen desire to cooperate with Chinese members. Prof. DUAN Anmin gave a brief presentation focusing on project overview, objectives, research background and initial plans from both side. Each team member introduced recent research advance, work plan to achieve research goal of the project, possible collaborative direction, and outcome integration. Both sides agreed the project is highly innovative and competitive and collaboration is of vital importance. Thai scientists will ensure smooth access to the station data in Indochina Peninsula, especially Thailand and explore the mechanism for the variations of rainfall extremes. The Chinese team will provide flood forecast platform to the public and proceed to analyze the future projections of rainfall extremes by the state-of-the-art climate models.

The project jointly sponsored by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the Thailand Research Fund (TRF) expects to increase the understanding of extreme rainfall and associate flood events over Indochina Peninsula and southern China and improve the climate system model’s simulation skill over the region. The success of the kick-off meeting set a good ground for the implementation of the project.