Guangzhou Field Thunder Test Base is located in Conhua District of Guangzhou, and it is constructed and operated by CAMS and Guangdong Meteorological Administration. The base is guided under the policies of reinforcing the climate service capability and constructing the modernized and innovative platform on climate; its destination is to support the businesses of thunder supervision, thunder alarming and forecasting and thunder protection of China with science and technology; it is the fundamental and opening comprehensive testing base on atmospheric electricity gathering the functions of thunder testing, businesses and scientific research.

Guangzhou Field Thunder Test Base performs the works centering on the demand of thunder businesses and it is engaging in resolving the critical scientific problems in the thunder businesses. Since the foundation in 2006, the base has undertaken many tasks of National Natural Science Foundation and 973 and 863 projects. It has released more than 40 papers in 2006-2014, and obtained nearly 10 patents as well as a batch of scientific research achievements with international influence; some of them have been operationally transformed and generated obvious social benefits. It has obtained the following achievements in the recent years:

1.It has continually consummated the conditions for field testing and established the first-rank field testing platform on thunder in China.

2.It has developed and consummated the technologies of artificial thunder triggering and its measurement. It had successfully triggered 74 thunders up till 2014 and realized the highly accurate and direct measurement of the current of 10A – 10kA level and obtained large amount of comprehensive observation information, which has enriched the accumulated relevant data in China and provided data foundation for the research on thunder physics and protection.

3.It has established the comprehensive observation platform on short-distance sound, light, electricity and magnet in terms of thunder channel and realized the synchronized observation and collection of multi measurement system deployed in the test field with the area of about 17000 sqm.

4.It has performed the protective testing of the equipment under realist thunder environment, such as automatic meteorological station, wireless communication base station, high-voltage electric transmission lines, buried cable, wind-driven generator and surge protection device, and obtained the abundant first-hand information of comprehensive observation; it has researched the coupling and destroying mechanism of LEMP in various systems and examined the effectivity and destroying mechanism of thunder protection elements and provided important materials for the development of thunder protection technology and standard revision.

5.The field test platform based on thunder has realized the quantitative evaluation of the performance of lightning positioning system and resolved the problem of the difficulties in determining the actual operation indexes of lightning positioning network, and provided the important scientific and technologic support for the development of thunder detecting technology in China as well as important rationale for the investigation and authentication of thunder disaster and the application of lightning information in the disastrous weather supervision, alarming and mode assimilation.

6.It has established the advanced “Guangzhou Thunder Observation Station for High-rise Building” and developed the multi-parameter and automatic observation system for thunder; it has obtained a batch of high-quality observation information and its innovative research achievements have been paid attention to and accepted by domestic and foreign colleagues. Especially that it has discovered the side stroke during thunder bonding as well as the diversity of leader connection for the first time in the world, and implied the features of leader development during the procedure of thunder connection in high time-space resolution, and provided the important observation rationale for the development of leader mode and the research on the thunder protection technology.

In the recent years, Guangzhou Field Thunder Test Base is reinforcing the cooperation with exterior units, such as Tsinghua University, Wuhan University, PLA University of Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Guangzhou Geochemistry Institute of CAS and other universities and institutes; they research relying on the field test platform for thunder. Besides, some enterprises on anti-thunder, communication and petroleum chemistry also performed the relevant research on thunder protection technology and facilities based on such platform.

Guangzhou Field Thunder Test Base will accelerate the construction of infrastructure and observation capability in the future, reinforce the domestic and international cooperation and interaction, organize some large-scale comprehensive observation testing on thunder, expand the testing capability and researching field of the base and promote the position of the base in the field of atmospheric electricity research in the world.

Total-sky Cloud Imager, TCI is the ground-based automatic cloud observation equipment independently researched and manufactured by National Key Laboratory on Disastrous Climate under the support of China Academy of Meteorological Science. TCI equipment is composed of three main parts: camera shooting device, sun sheltering device and processing terminal. The camera shooting device utilizes the combination of highly stable camera and the fish-eye lens with at least 180 degrees. Being different from other ground-based cloud observation equipment on the band of visible light, TCI uses a new-type protection plan for sun sheltering of “full sheltering in idle time and full opening during observation”, such plan can reduce the complexity of the mechanical structure of the device, and it is suitable for popularization and application. This result has obtained many national patents.

We have performed the observation test in the regions of different climate types since 2009 and obtained large amount of information of ground-based total sky cloud observation. It also performed the research on the cloud test and classification method of cloud image along with Visual Intelligence Laboratory of Beijing Jiaotong University. In order to realize the data sharing, we have established the total sky cloud image database and it is opening to the domestic and foreign scientific researchers, so as to promote the research on cloud test and relevant algorithm on cloud type identification.

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Related links

http://www.camscma.cn/cgi/tcis.htm

http://icn.bjtu.edu.cn/visint/resources/CloudImages

patent

Yang Jun,Lv Weitao,Ma Ying,Yao Wen. The measurement method of sunshine duration based on the visible light image in the sky

 National invention paten，Patent number：ZL201210199585.5，2014.

Ma Ying,Lv Weitao,Yang Jun,Zhang Yang,Yao Wen. The hemisphere mobile lens sheltering device based on the gear structure .National invention paten，Patent number：ZL201210140553.8，2014.

Zhang Yang,Ma Ying,Lv Weitao.A kind of sheltering device for full vision lens.National invention paten，Patent number：ZL201110159309.1，2013.

Lv WeiTao,Li Qingyong,Yang Jun. A kind of extracting and retrieval methods for the texture features of ground-based cloud atlas for teaching.National invention paten，Patent number：ZL200910238522.4，2011.

Zhang Yang,Lv Weitao,Ma Ying,Yao Wen,Yang Jun. The ground-based total sky automatic cloud observation system based on the light sheltering structure of ball clack rotation.Patent for Utility Model,Patent number：ZL200920277594.5，2010.

Zhang Yang,Lv Weitao,Ma Ying,Yao Wen,Yang Jun. The ground-based total sky automatic cloud observation system based on the lifting structure of photographic unit .Patent for Utility Model,Patent number：ZL200920277906.2，2010.

paper

Q. Li, Z. Zhang, W. Lu, J. Yang, Y. Ma, and W. Yao. From Pixels to Patches: a Cloud Classification Method Based on Bag of Micro-structures, Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss., 8, 10213–10247, doi:10.5194/amtd-8-10213-2015.

J. Yang, Q. Min, W. Lu, Y. Ma, W. Yao, T. Lu, J. Du, and G. Liu. A total sky cloud detection method using real clear sky background, Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss., 8, 13073–13098, doi:10.5194/amtd-8-13073-2015.

J. Yang, Q. Min, W. Lu, Y. Ma, W. Yao, T. Lu, J. Du, and G. Liu. An automated cloud detection method based on the green channel of total-sky visible images, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 8, 4671–4679, doi:10.5194/amt-8-4671-2015, 2015.

M. Xia, W. Lu, J. Yang, Y. Ma, W. Yao, and Z. Zhang. A hybrid method based on extreme learning machine and k-nearest neighbor for cloud classification of ground-based visible cloud image, neurocomputing, 160, 238-249, 2015.

J. Yang, W. Lu, Y. Ma, and W. Yao. An automated cirrus cloud detection method for a ground based cloud image, J. Atmos. Ocean. Tech., 29, 527–537, 2012.

Q. Li, W. Lu, J. Yang, and J. Wang. Thin Cloud Detection of All-Sky Images Using Markov Random Fields, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, 9(3), 417-421, 2012.

Q. Li, W. Lu, and J. Yang. A hybrid thresholding algorithm for cloud detection on ground-based color images, J. Atmos. Ocean. Tech., 28, 1286–1296, 2011.

Zhu Biao,Yang JUn,Lv Weitao,Chen Liying,Ma Ying,Yao Wen,Zhang Yijun.he categorization method of cloud image of ground-base visible light based on KNN,Journal of Applied Meteorological Science，23（6），721-728，2012.

Yang Jun,Lv Weitao,Ma Ying,Yao Wen,Li Qingyong.The method of automatioc testing of ground-based clould based on local threshold interpolation, Acta Meteorologica Sinica，68（6），1007-1017，2010.

Yang Jun,Lv Weitao,Ma Ying,Yao Wen,Li Qingyong.The method of automatic testing of ground-based cloud based on self-adaptive threshold,Journal of Applied Meteorological Science，20（6），713-721，2009.