The Annual Academic Meeting of NMC was held on 12-13 January 2004 in Beijing. Approximately 200 participants attended the meeting including the experts from CMO, NCC, MIC and SMO, as well as the delegates from CAMS and NSMC. The meeting was chaired by Ms. Jiao Meiyan, deputy director-general of NMC. Dr. Zheng Guoguang, deputy administrator, and Mr. Zhao Datong, deputy director-general of DSTD made addresses in the opening ceremony. The speech given by Dr. Zheng Guoguang was very inspiring. He highly appraised that the staff of NMC worked hard in solidarity and obtained success in weather forecast service, scientific research and oppugning SARS, especially that the application and accomplishment of national level scientific research projects were very satisfying. Dr. Zheng wished that NMC would take the opportunity to push forward the high-speed development of China's meteorological enterprise through its top-ranking forecast service, scientific research fruits and operational technical assurances. He also wished that NMC would develop and pullulate in implementing the strategy of "Science and Technology Encourage Meteorology".

    Dr. Zhang Renhe, President of CAMS, was invited to give a speech on the new scientific research progress of CAMS; Prof. Chen Zuoning, academician from National Parellel Computer Engineering Research Center was invited to introduce the path of China's high performance calculation and exploration of Shenwei; Dr. Li Jianping from IAP/CAS was invited to deliver a report on the physical hypostasis of polar oscillation and its relation with climate in China, and to introduce the scientific research progress of LASG in 2003; Prof. Li Zechun, academician from NMC, was invited to introduce the progress of the project "agricultural environment safety and meteorological assurance". Ms. Jiao Meiyan reported on the scientific research progress of NMC in 2003. Dr. Wang Bin from Hawaii University was invited to deliver a report on seasonal oscillation of summer monsoon.

    The meeting was divided into four sub-sessions, including Weather & Climate Joint Session, Meteorological Information Technology Session, Weather Research Session and Climate Research Session. The meeting focused on 1) weather forecast and services in 2003; 2) analysis of extreme weather/climate events and research on forecast/prediction methods; 3) agrometeorology, environment monitoring, assessment and application of remote sensing; 4) research and simulation on climate system mechanism; 5) research on global and regional climate change and policies; 6) meteorological data development and application of information technology on meteorological operation; 7) development of special weather forecast service technology. Totally 53 reports were delivered in the meeting, and 103 papers were collected in the meeting proceedings.