July 24, 2026 (MLN): China plans to expand its AI-powered weather early warning system, MAZU, to 30 countries over the next five years as part of efforts to expand access to artificial intelligence tools for disaster preparedness.
Developed by the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), the system is designed to integrate cloud services, wind and cloud satellite data, AI-based forecasts, and shock-based warnings into a single platform to help vulnerable communities prepare for extreme weather events before they occur.
The commitment was announced at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, where the Chinese government positioned AI not just as frontier computing, but as a tool for climate resilience, APP reported.
According to CMA, the upgraded cloud-based version of MAZU now offers more than 200 products across 30 categories and has AI woven into the platform.
Its scope has expanded from traditional weather forecasting to impact-based forecasting, allowing government agencies to determine not only upcoming weather but how it may affect transportation, agriculture, energy, aviation, and other sectors.
The platform currently supports users in more than 40 countries, with customized versions running in Pakistan, Ethiopia, Solomon Islands, Jordan, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, and Djibouti.
Implementation will vary depending on country needs. In Pakistan, Chinese and Pakistani meteorologists have jointly incorporated local radar and satellite data to build specialized tools to combat glacial lake outburst floods, monsoon rains, and storms.
Jordan’s version supports the communication of warnings in Arabic, Djibouti’s version covers port and city management, Mongolia uses the system for sandstorm prediction and urban disaster response, and Ethiopia has extended it to agriculture, river basin management, aviation and marine services.
The supporting infrastructure includes permanent overseas cloud nodes in Singapore and Cairo operated by the National Weather Information Center, and Windyun satellite data is currently delivered to users in more than 130 countries and regions.
The CMA says AI is also embedded in specialized tools such as dust prediction models, which run significantly faster than traditional numerical systems.
CMA Chief Engineer Pan Jinjun said artificial intelligence has become a key driver for improving hazardous weather prediction and early warning, noting that AI models have shown superior results in typhoon prediction, although limited extreme weather data and reliability concerns are hurdles until such systems can be fully trusted operationally.
Capacity building is taking place in parallel with technology advancements, with nearly 1,000 weather experts from more than 100 developing countries participating in China’s early warning training program in recent years, and MAZU scholarships launched in June aimed at experts from Belt and Road partner countries.
The newly introduced menu-based service platform allows government agencies to select observation instruments, satellite products, and AI prediction tools according to their needs, and has already served more than 100 international cooperation projects.
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