On October 23, 2020, the mid-term pre-inspection meeting and strong convection observation technology meeting of the National Key Research and Development Program for Monitoring, Early Warning and Prevention of Major Natural Disasters--"Tornado Detection Radar Development and Operational Application Research" project (No. YFC1506100) led by the University of CUIT, 2018YFC1506100) was held in Chengdu. More than 60 people attended the meeting, including the person in charge of the project, Liu Shuhua, the expert group of the project, Professor Zhao Kun, Ye Chengzhi, Pan Xinmin, Zheng Wei, Li Zhaoming, as well as the project leaders and project backbone.

The meeting was co-chaired by Prof. Liu Shuhua of Peking University, the responsible expert on the project, and Deputy Director Tang Zhiya of the Science and Technology Department of CUIT. Professor Jianxin He reported the overall progress of the project. Subsequently, the four subject leaders reported on the important progress in tornado detection radar development, tornado cooperative observation network, tornado refined structure and evolution characteristics, and tornado early warning forecast. The expert group fully affirmed the project research results achieved by the project and considered that the subject had achieved the goal of the mid-term research plan and assessment indicators, and reached the expected milestones. Subsequently, the expert group put forward constructive comments and suggestions on the innovation of the project research objectives, the application, and transformation of the results, the collaboration between the subjects, and the condensation of the work highlights.

In order to preferably accomplish the research tasks of the project, the agenda of this meeting also contained a seminar on strong convective observation techniques. Prof. Kun Zhao from Nanjing University, Chief Chengzhi Ye from Hunan Meteorological Bureau, and Dr. Zhaoming Li from Foshan Tornado Research Center made invited presentations; the project team, Dr. Yusu Lu, Associate Prof. Qiangyu Zeng, Dr. Xiaowen Tang, and Senior Engineer Yan Chen reported the research highlight results. Finally, Prof. He Jianxin expressed his gratitude to the experts for their valuable opinions and comments, summarized the difficulties encountered in the project so far, and will focus on tackling them in the follow-up work.