(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-10-31 20:53

BEIJING -- Beijing has begun to provide weather forecasts tailored for heating in cold weather in a move to reduce energy consumption and pollution in the city.

The Beijing Meteorological Bureau initiated the service on Tuesday ahead of the heating season, which usually runs from November 15 till next March in Beijing.

Cities in northern China, as in Beijing, normally provide public heating services for residents when the winter comes, with facilities, including big boilers, connected to each household with supplies of hot water circulating in the pipes.

The public heating system in Beijing aims to keep indoor temperatures above 16 degrees Celsius, but some people complain the temperature is too high when it gets warmer as the daily heating temperature is fixed all through the heating season.

A new system with more than 100 monitoring spots across the city has been set up to make it possible to tune heating systems with appropriate figures, said Ding Deping, head of the specific forecast department of the municipal bureau.

It would provide indoor and outdoor temperatures of residential areas and wind speeds, along with data such as water temperatures into and out of boilers, for the bureau to analyze and make forecasts, said Ding.

Ding said heating service providers and individual households could tune the heating temperatures based on forecasts of the boiler's water temperatures a few days ahead of time.

The monitoring system covers major residential areas of the city, including outer suburbs.

The bureau has been providing trial services for dozens of heating units in Beijing since the winter of 2003, Ding said.

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