Historical Fragments of China's Meteorological Radars

The Story of METSTAR Radar

CINRAD Joint Venture. In August 1994, Unisys China Company Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Unisys Corporation in China, and the China Meteorological Administration signed an MoU to establish a joint venture in China. The goal was to develop and manufacture a new Doppler weather radar for use in China and for marketing throughout the Pacific Rim. This radar would be similar to the WSR-88D, but the China New Generation Weather Radar (CINRAD) would be specifically tailored for the Pacific Rim and sold at a lower cost. ¹

A People’s Daily article from August 17, 1995, mentioned this cooperation:

China and the U.S. Jointly Produce a New Generation of Weather Radars

(News report) A new-generation weather radar monitoring network, composed of more than 100 Doppler weather radars, will replace China’s existing radar network over the next 20 years. Recently, a signing ceremony for the joint production of these new radars was held in Beijing.

It is reported that the construction of the new-generation weather radar network will cost 800 million yuan. The China Huayun Technology Development Corporation, under the China Meteorological Administration, has signed an agreement with the American Loral Corporation to establish a joint venture dedicated to providing high-performance, low-cost weather radars for China and exporting them globally. (By Duan Gongwei) ²

Details about the joint venture’s equity structure were reported in Defense Daily:

Loral Defense Systems-East and the China National Huayun Technology Development Corp. have agreed to establish a joint venture to develop and produce an advanced Doppler weather radar system for use, initially, by the China Meteorological Administration. The system, called CINRAD (China Next Generation Weather Radar) will be similar to U.S.’s National Weather Service NEXRAD network, which is produced by Loral. Loral will own 51 percent of the joint venture, and will provide systems engineering and NEXRAD technology. Loral says CINRAD will offer the same or better performance than NEXRAD, and will be competitively priced. ³

A China Meteorological News article in 2019 provided further insights into the negotiations:

Xiao Diquan, Head of the Chinese Negotiation Team for the U.S.-China Collaboration:

In 1994, I led negotiations to introduce the U.S. NEXRAD, a state-of-the-art Doppler weather radar at the time. However, each unit cost as much as $4.85 million, making it unaffordable for most countries. The U.S. saw China as a vast potential market.

…

During the negotiations, the U.S. experts took a high-handed approach, insisting that China buy disassembled radar components for local assembly before considering localized production. We flatly rejected this. NEXRAD was already very expensive, and assembling it in China would likely cost even more. Moreover, the system was designed in 1988 and had a lifespan of only 20 years.

In response, we proposed an “import and integrate” plan: importing key technologies in radar reception, transmission, and antennas while collaborating with domestic radar institutes for manufacturing. The U.S. initially dismissed this as too risky, but after evaluating our technological capabilities, they began serious discussions.

After seven rounds of tough negotiations, the most contentious issue was the technology-sharing ratio. The U.S. initially insisted on a 9:1 split, which we firmly rejected. Our team remained composed and strategic throughout the discussions, ultimately securing a more balanced agreement under the framework of a global market expansion strategy.

…

When selecting manufacturers, we stipulated that they pre-finance the project and only receive payment upon passing final inspections to prevent wasteful spending or unreliable projects. In 1996, even before the design was finalized, the Anhui provincial government invested in purchasing a radar unit.

Over four years, with less than $3 million, we established a joint venture and successfully introduced the first radar that matched or exceeded the performance of the U.S. WSR-88D while significantly reducing costs. ⁴

The radar purchased by the Anhui government was the Hefei radar mentioned later.

A separate report detailed the domestic partners involved in the project:

This was a significant milestone. Through the “import and integrate” approach, we introduced the world’s most advanced fully coherent Doppler radar (NEXRAD) technology from the U.S. and collaborated with leading domestic research, design, manufacturing, and application institutions such as 14th Research Institute, 54th Research Institute, and 206th Research Institute to jointly develop and produce China’s new-generation weather radar (CINRAD). This enabled a leap forward in China’s radar technology. ⁵

More details about the Beijing METSTAR radar company can be found on their official website, including key milestones:

• 1994: After expert evaluation, the China Meteorological Administration decided to introduce WSR-88D Doppler weather radar technology and establish a joint venture.
• 1996: The company’s founding ceremony was held at the Beijing Shangri-La Hotel; the Party branch was established.
• 1998: The company changed its name from Beijing Huayun-Loral Meteorological Radar Systems Co., Ltd. to Beijing METSTAR Radar Co., Ltd. ⁶

In 2023, the company was renamed:

Due to business development needs, “Beijing METSTAR Radar Co., Ltd.” was officially renamed “Huayun METSTAR Radar (Beijing) Co., Ltd.” on August 11, 2023. ⁷

On the homepage, there is a clear and detailed record of the equity changes:

Beijing METSTAR Radar Co., Ltd. was established in 1995 as a high-tech enterprise through a joint investment by China Huayun Meteorological Technology Group, under the China Meteorological Administration, and Lockheed Martin Corporation (USA).

…

In April 2011, through an equity transfer agreement, Huayun’s shareholding increased from 49% to 70%, while Lockheed Martin’s stake decreased from 51% to 30%.

In November 2015, Lockheed Martin transferred its remaining shares to Huayun, converting the company from a Sino-foreign joint venture into a fully domestic enterprise. ⁸

The records mention three U.S. companies: Unisys, Loral, and Lockheed Martin. However, the company that originally signed the joint venture agreement with the China Meteorological Administration was Loral Corporation. ⁹

Loral Corporation first acquired a division of Unisys, then was later acquired by Lockheed Martin:

• May 5, 1995 – Loral acquires Paramax, the defense unit of Unisys, for $862 million in cash.
• January 8, 1996 – Lockheed Martin agreed to purchase the defense electronics and system integration businesses of Loral for $9.1 billion. Loral becomes Loral Space and Communications.¹⁰

This explains why the 1994 memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed with Unisys, the 1995 joint venture was established with Loral, and the later equity transfers were handled by Lockheed Martin.

CINRAD/SA

In 2001, S.L. Johnston visited China and provided some insights into the radar technology being developed:

I visited METSTAR JV in Northwest Beijing to see and discuss their metereological radar project, jointly with Lockheed-Martin. Their CINRAD-WSR-98D is an upgrade of the now old UNISYS WSR-88D NEXRAD made for the US National Weather Service. The new model has many enhancements that provide performance superior to NEXRAD. Two are: use of manual scan in real-time radar operating mode; and use of rain gauges to provide calibration of the radar derived from empirically based rainfall estimation. Interestingly, they are making both S-band and C-band versions. Most of the radar systems assemblies are made in China; transmitters by NRIET in Nanjing; antennas by ???; receivers are made in Xian (some with digital receivers). DELL makes CINRAD computers. These radars will essentially blanket the inhabited areas of China. Most interestingly, the C-band and S-band radars are not intermixed, but rather are in separate “bands.” The antenna towers (30 m or so) are artistic wonders: some are curved masonry rather than plain steel towers topped by radomes. The first was installed in Hufe in 1998. This is a project that China and Lockheed-Martin can be proud of; I was given a model of the CINRAD-WSR-98D antenna (batteries not included). ¹¹

It mentions that the transmitters, antennas, and receivers were domestically produced, which aligns with reports from China Meteorological News. Additionally, the structure of the radar towers differs from U.S. radar stations. You can refer to the images below of the completed Nanhui Radar and Hefei Radar to compare them with U.S. radar stations.

Shanghai’s Purchase of NEXRAD

During the 1990s, Shanghai’s existing weather radar system could no longer meet the city’s growing needs:

The rapid progress of society and economic development brought major changes to Shanghai’s urban landscape. The 714 weather radar, originally installed 68 meters high on the rooftop of the meteorological building in the city center, had become obstructed by the surrounding high-rise buildings, limiting its observational capabilities.

To enhance the performance of Doppler weather radar for severe convective weather detection and forecasting, authorities decided to relocate the radar station to the suburbs.

After careful evaluation, the final location was chosen: Nanhui County’s coastal tourist resort, 45 km away from the Xujiahui Meteorological Tower. The reasons included:

• The area’s urban planning prohibited high-rise buildings, ensuring long-term unobstructed radar coverage.
• The location was far from the city center, reducing near-field blind spots and improving precipitation detection over urban areas.
• The site was strategically positioned between Shanghai’s planned deep-water international port and the newly constructed international airport, allowing the radar to provide weather services for both.
• Being close to the coastline, the radar would be well-suited for typhoon monitoring. ¹²

In a separate report, it was revealed that Shanghai Meteorological Bureau signed a major agreement with Unisys in the mid-1990s:

In another agreement, the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau signed a US$4.76 million contract with Unisys China Hong Kong for the delivery of a WSR-88D Doppler weather radar for installation in Shanghai in early 1996. The Shanghai radar would be identical to the US systems and installed on a 700 ft twin-tower complex built in downtown Shanghai by a Hong Kong developer. Data would be transmitted to the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau and serve as a baseline for developing the CINRAD system. ¹

A 1997 report documented the radar’s installation and commissioning:

In 1997, with strong support from the China Meteorological Administration and the Shanghai Municipal Government, China’s first WSR-88D Doppler weather radar was installed in Nanhui, Pudong. This significantly improved Shanghai’s severe weather monitoring and early warning capabilities. ¹³

The Pudong Government website provided additional information:

The radar base was completed and put into operation in November 1997.

The facility covers 0.53 hectares with a 1,300 square meter building, designed by Shanghai Pudong Design Institute (formerly under the Nuclear Industry Ministry).

The radar tower is 30 meters high, constructed from reinforced concrete, with a 19.5-meter diameter radome housing the WSR-88D Doppler radar.

The project was jointly funded by the China Meteorological Administration, the Shanghai Municipal Government, and the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau, at a cost of over 30 million yuan. ¹⁴

During the construction and operation of the system, some adjustments were made due to communication and data transmission challenges:

The Radar Product Generator (RPG) and Radar Data Acquisition (RDA) units were placed together in the radar station’s equipment room, and digital narrowband communication was used between the radar station and the meteorological building, which differs from the setup in U.S. radar stations.

Additionally, the radar’s 56K interface was directly connected to DTU equipment, enabling long-distance narrowband communication at 56Kbps—a solution tailored to Shanghai’s conditions.

This adjustment ensured that even though the RPG and Product User Processor (PUP) were located separately, the transmission speed remained at 56Kbps, effectively achieving the same performance as if RPG and PUP were colocated.

Moreover, the cost was highly efficient—although 56Kbps was twice as expensive as a 9.6Kbps connection, the annual cost for two lines was only around 50,000 yuan, which was less than one-tenth of the cost of a broadband connection, achieving an optimal balance between performance and affordability. ¹²

After one year of operation, staff conducted an evaluation of short-term convective weather forecasts from July to August 1998:

During these two months, there were 20 occurrences of severe convective weather, and the radar system issued 29 warnings:

• 19 accurate forecasts (hit rate, POD: 95%, indicating a high detection capability).
• 10 false alarms (false alarm rate, FAR: 34%).
• 1 missed forecast.

The relatively high false alarm rate was mainly due to convective storms forming outside Shanghai being detected by radar and triggering warnings, but later weakening or dissipating before reaching the city, leading to false alarms.¹⁵

China’s First CINRAD/SA – Hefei

A book titled Luyang Silver Pearl – A Chronicle of China’s First S-Band Doppler Weather Radar in Hefei describes how the project was established:

The meeting room was filled with heated discussions despite the cold winds outside. Many provinces were competing for China’s first next-generation S-band Doppler weather radar, but Anhui’s delegation, led by top provincial leaders, made an exceptionally strong case.

The five senior officials from the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) were visibly moved. Such high-level provincial engagement in securing a meteorological project was unprecedented in China’s history.

As CMA Director Zou Jingmeng paced the room, considering the earnest pleas from Anhui’s officials, he finally made a decisive announcement:

“The first S-band Doppler weather radar from the U.S.-China joint production will be installed in Hefei!”

The room fell silent for a brief moment before erupting in applause.

“And it will be provided free of charge!” Zou added.

Governor Hui Liangyu stood up, shook Zou’s hand firmly, and expressed heartfelt gratitude on behalf of Anhui’s provincial government. He promised that Anhui would fund the radar station’s civil construction, making it a jointly funded provincial-ministerial project to enhance the region’s disaster prevention and mitigation capabilities. ¹⁶

The radar stations I’m more familiar with are generally not very tall. For example, the typical U.S. NEXRAD radar looks like this:

In contrast, Luyang Silver Pearl in Hefei stands at an impressive 128 meters:

In the book Luyang Silver Pearl, there is a detailed description of the source and adjustments made to the radar tower’s appearance:

Once the radar station construction was officially approved, the design of the tower attracted much attention from provincial and city architectural design departments. A total of six units submitted six different proposals. Following the instructions of Governor Gui Liangyu that “the tower must be unique and aesthetically pleasing, reflecting a high-tech theme,” the provincial meteorological bureau’s leadership initially selected six proposals, and after soliciting opinions from the entire staff, the final proposal was submitted to the provincial party committee and government. Governor Gui and Vice Governor Wang Zhaoyao personally reviewed the proposals amidst their busy schedules, and eventually, the proposal from the Provincial Urban and Rural Planning and Design Institute was chosen.

This selected design had three major breakthroughs. First, it departed from the usual cylindrical shape commonly used for such buildings and designed the tower as a square. Second, the observation deck, located 93 to 97 meters above the ground, broke away from the traditional concentric circle design and was designed as an eccentric circle, with the disk offset by 6.8 meters from the core shaft. Third, it broke the traditional symmetrical design by adopting three asymmetric forms. The entire tower was designed to be 115 meters tall, with a reinforced concrete frame structure. The front and side faces of the tower formed the letters “A”, “H”, and “F”, representing “Anhui Hefei”. From a distance, the tower appears to be soaring upward, which offers a refreshing new appearance.

…

When construction of the tower’s civil works began, experts from the radar manufacturer, Beijing Minshida, visited Hefei to specifically study the radar tower’s design, particularly the layout of the machine room and the issue of resonance frequency. According to the original design, the tower’s resonance frequency was calculated to be 0.52 Hz, while the new generation weather radar required that the tower’s resonance frequency during operation should not be less than 0.7 Hz. Clearly, there was a significant discrepancy. The radar company’s experts warned that if this resonance frequency issue wasn’t resolved, the radar could not be installed.

How was the problem solved? Unfortunately, the radar experts had no solution to offer. They suggested going back to the architectural design department, but the department had only considered structural factors such as load-bearing capacity and verticality—resonance frequency was not a consideration. The problem was then communicated to the U.S., and the American experts replied with surprise: “We are very surprised that you are using a reinforced concrete structure…” It turned out that American radars were always installed on steel frames 30-40 meters high and had never used such tall reinforced concrete buildings to support the radar. No similar example existed either in China or internationally.

…

While efforts to tackle this issue were underway with technical experts, Director Liu also ordered Radar Office Director Xing Kepu to lead a team of technical and engineering personnel to seek outside expertise. After a stressful 1997 Chinese New Year, they visited the University of Science and Technology of China. With the cooperation of the provincial meteorological bureau’s radar office, Professor Wu Changchun from the Department of Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering led his research team, conducting extensive theoretical analyses and numerical calculations. Ultimately, they completed the project “Dynamic Analysis and Structural Optimization of the Doppler Weather Radar Tower’s Structural System” and revised the original design, increasing the resonance frequency to 0.71 Hz, which met the radar company’s required minimum threshold and was accepted by all parties.

The revisions involved two main aspects: first, the concrete grade for the wall casting was upgraded from C35 to C45; second, the center of gravity of the walls was lowered, and the thickness of the walls was reduced at higher levels. These two seemingly simple adjustments were the meticulous work of the scientific community. Two years later, after further testing, the resonance frequency of the tower was measured at 1.6 Hz, far exceeding the radar’s design requirements. ¹⁶

From the communication above, it seems that the design and decision-making process for the tower did not involve the American radar experts. However, this construction may have set an important precedent, as I learned that the radar tower for the next-generation weather radar in Yanji is also quite tall and looks quite beautiful in the sea of clouds:

The total height of the new-generation weather radar tower is 164.85 meters. The entire building serves multiple functions, including the new-generation weather radar station, meteorological science exhibitions, and landscape tourism. ¹⁷

This brings up a historical event: Zou Jingmeng was tragically killed in Beijing in February 1999 ¹⁸, and did not witness the subsequent nationwide radar construction boom.

After the construction of the Hefei radar, the development of China’s new-generation weather radar network expanded nationwide. In 2000, the third CINRAD/SA radar was installed in Guangzhou:

The Guangzhou CINRAD/SA radar began indoor installation and debugging in September 2000, and completed on-site acceptance in April 2001, having been in operation for over a year. As the third radar of the same type in the national network… ¹⁹

This marks an important step in the expansion of China’s weather radar infrastructure, leading to broader coverage and improved meteorological services across the country.

Beijing Weather Radar

According to a 1994 People’s Daily report:

Doppler Weather Radar Put into Use in Beijing

This report announces that China’s first fully coherent pulse Doppler weather radar was recently completed and put into operation at the Beijing Meteorological Bureau. This radar is currently one of the most advanced tools internationally for detecting tornadoes, medium and small-scale precipitation systems, and conducting precipitation physics research. (He Jiazhen) ²⁰

This radar is a C-band weather radar (CINRAD/CC), located on the rooftop of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau in Chedaogou:

Later, similar to the situation in Shanghai, with the progress of Beijing’s urbanization, the radar station’s location became unsuitable:

The Beijing Meteorological Bureau originally had a C-band radar, but due to obstruction, a new S-band Doppler radar was built in the southern suburbs. ²¹

To support the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, an S-band weather radar was installed in the southern suburbs at Guangxiangtai. Later, another S-band weather radar was constructed in Yanqing for the 2022 Winter Olympics:

In the southern suburbs of Beijing, there is a 52.7-meter-high white tower, and the top of this tower houses one of Beijing’s two S-band weather radars. Wang Hui, Senior Engineer at the Beijing Meteorological Observation Center, explained that this S-band weather radar became operational in 2006 and provided meteorological support for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. “It can detect precipitation cloud features within a 460 km radius, and the radial velocity of precipitation or cloud particles within a 230 km radius. It also provides high accuracy and stability in detecting cloud and precipitation particles, hail, thunderstorms, and even tornadoes. It met the demands for monitoring large-scale weather systems.”

In 2021, to ensure the smooth hosting of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Beijing installed a second S-band weather radar. “This radar not only provided strong support for the meteorological services during the Winter Olympics, but also effectively monitored weather systems in the northwest direction of Beijing, playing an important role in short-term warnings for summer severe convection weather,” Wang Hui added. ²²

One of the unique aspects of the Haituoshan radar is that it operates without a manned duty shift during regular operation ²³, and its appearance is quite different from the southern suburbs radar:

Another interesting point is that the Haituoshan radar is located close to an environmental protection zone, which posed certain challenges ²³:

In recent years, Beijing has also built several X-band radars to supplement its weather observation network:

• One each in Tongzhou, Changping, and Shunyi ²⁴
• One each in Pinggu and Yanqing ²⁵
• One in Miyun ²⁶
• One in Fangshan ²⁷
• One each in Mentougou and Huairou ²⁸

The initial planned locations for Yanqing and Pinggu had issues, and the sites were later changed:

Due to issues concerning the protection of the Great Wall, the construction could not proceed at the original locations, so the site was changed. ²⁵

Currently, the distribution and coverage of weather radars in Beijing is as follows: