With the joint effort of the Observatory and Mainland experts, the meteorological telecommunications circuit between the Observatory and the China Meteorological Agency in Beijing was successfully upgraded with a bandwidth of 4Mbps (4 million bits per second) on 22 May 2008. The new circuit is about 60 times faster than the original circuit. The operational computer systems have also successfully connected via this new link and through which meteorological data are now being exchanged in real time.

The Hong Kong-Beijing meteorological telecommunications circuit is one of the main trunks of the World Meteorological Organisation's Global Telecommunication Network. It provides essential support to the exchange of meteorological data between Hong Kong and the Mainland. With the steady growth in meteorological co-operation between Hong Kong and the Mainland, the volume of meteorological data being exchanged has also increased gradually. The original circuit with a bandwidth of 64Kbps (64 thousand bits per second) will not be sufficient to meet the future needs.

Besides being capable of handling large volume of meteorological data, the new circuit will be able to support video conferencing in future. This will help facilitate the communication between meteorologists of the Observatory and the Mainland during severe weather.

The Observatory and Mainland experts are discussing issues relating to  meteorological telecommunications co-operation