People who recently visited the official Weibo site (China's equivalent to Twitter) of China Meteorological Administration may have raised a few eyebrows when reading: "The devaluation of the Russian rouble has affected the accuracy of Chinese weather reports."

According to the administration, the decreased investment in meteorological forecasting in Russia has caused the imprecise reports of local weather thus affecting the analysis of Chinese meteorologists.

The posting has been forwarded over 1,600 times and followed with nearly 300 comments, causing some bewilderment as some Netizens questioned the relevance of linking weather forecasting and the Russian rouble.

According to a follow-up Weibo post by the China Meteorological Administration, the reduced funding to Russian observatories may probably affect the collection of atmospheric data conducted by Upper-Air Observation, an instrumental technology developed around the 1930s to gauge the temperature, pressure, humidity and wind-force in the atmosphere.

Although the data can also be collected from the distant observation of space satellites and transmitted through retrieval algorithms, a mathematical method in measuring atmospheric conditions, it is not as precise as those obtained from meteorological observatories.

Due to insufficient financial support, many Russian observatories recently stopped providing meteorological data. The lack of the precise regional data, especially forecasts of Siberia weather conditions which have great influence on the northern part of China in winter, will affect the accuracy of the other meteorological forecasting, as atmospheric conditions are globally interconnected and interactive, Chinese meteorologists explained.

Liu Xin, director of the Product Service Office of the administration, said the Weibo posting was issued to change the stereotyped image of the meteorological administration that has been considered too prim.

The hope is that the meteorological knowledge can be spread in a more interesting way and the topic on rouble and weather forecast is one such attempts, Liu said.

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