Upgrade of the Hong Kong-Tokyo Meteorological Telecommunications Circuit
The Hong Kong-Tokyo meteorological telecommunications circuit is one of the main trunks connecting the Observatory to the World Meteorological Organisation's Global Telecommunication Network. It provides essential support to the exchange of meteorological data between Hong Kong and Japan. To meet the needs in weather research and forecasting, there has been gradual increase in the meteorological information exchanged over the past years. The original telecommunications circuit, which has a bandwidth of 64Kbps (64 thousand bits per second), is approaching its maximum capacity and will not be sufficient to meet the future needs.
With the joint effort of the Observatory and the Japanese experts, the Hong Kong-Tokyo meteorological telecommunications circuit was successfully upgraded on 17 February 2009. The new circuit has a bandwidth of 1Mbps (1 million bits per second), which is 16 times faster than the original circuit. It provides ample bandwidth capacity for meteorological data exchange in future. The operational systems have also been successfully connected via this new circuit and through which meteorological data are now being exchanged in real time.
Figure 1: Upgrade of the meteorological telecommunications circuit between Hong Kong and Tokyo
Figure 1: Upgrade of the meteorological telecommunications circuit between Hong Kong and Tokyo 
