Chinese scientist wins top award for building meteorological sats

The World Meteorological Organization has awarded the International Meteorological Organization Prize to Chinese meteorologist Xu Jianmin for his contributions to the construction of meteorological satellites.

The decision was made by the WMO's Executive Council during its annual session in Geneva, Switzerland, and was announced on Thursday.

Xu, from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, has become the sole recipient of the award globally this year, and the fourth Chinese scientist ever to receive this highest international meteorological honor.

Xu is scheduled to collect the prize at the 2026 Executive Council meeting.

The China Meteorological Administration shared the information on its website, saying the prize is presented annually to individuals who have made outstanding contributions in the fields of meteorology, hydrology, and geophysical sciences. It stands as the equivalent of "the Nobel Prize within the meteorological community".

Born in Shanghai in 1944, Xu has worked in the meteorological sector for decades. He has been an academician at the CAE since 1997.

As one of the founders of China's meteorological satellite system construction and a leader in satellite data application and services, Xu put forward the general plan for the development of Chinese Fengyun meteorological satellites in the early stage of their development.

He spearheaded the design and construction of the ground system segment and led the advancements in core technologies crucial for the successful launch and application of China's first polar-orbiting satellites — the FY-1 series — and the first geostationary satellites — the FY-2 series. Since the FY-2C satellite was put into operation in 2005, the series has achieved a systemwide success rate of over 99.5 percent.

Guided by the overall design concept of Xu, the FY polar-orbiting satellite program was upgraded from the first generation of FY-1 series to the second generation of FY-3 series, which improved its capability in quantitative application.

The data observed by the FY-3 series satellites has been used in most global numerical weather prediction models, contributing to the improvement of global weather forecasting accuracy in these services.

In addition, FY geostationary satellites can provide frequent observations of West Asia, East Africa and the Indian Ocean, and have been able to fill the gap in the operational geostationary satellites observation network in the Indian Ocean.

The FY satellites have been activated 18 times and served as on-duty satellites for global extreme meteorological or environmental events under the guidance of an emergency support mechanism for international users of Fengyun meteorological satellites in disaster prevention and mitigation, which was released by the CMA in 2018.

Three other Chinese scientists earlier bestowed with the honor are Ye Duzheng in 2004, Qin Dahe in 2009 and Zeng Qingcun in 2017.