The Beijing Meteorological Observatory (BMO) has planed to use mobile phone messages to distribute bad weather warning to local citizens.

In August, all mobile phone users in Beijing will get free access to bad weather warning from local meteorological departments, Guo Hu, director of the BMO, said Wednesday.

Currently, a meteorological message broadcasting platform is under construction with the joint efforts of the BMO and major telecommunications companies such as Beijing Mobile, Beijing Unicom and Beijing Netcom, Guo said.

Given the inland city has hardly been attacked by foul weather like typhoons and rainstorms, Guo said that Beijing has not built a weather warning system as sound as the one in coastal Shanghai municipality.

This March 1, the Shanghai Municipal Government took the lead in China to establish a three-level bad weather warning system, using yellow, red and black to signal disasters in an ascending order. On Monday, six minutes before a lightening storm and gale struck the city, local meteorological departments issued a yellow warning signal, reminding local citizens to get ready.

The BMO is striving to build its own warning system conform to the city's specific conditions, Guo said.

Apart from the existing two meteorological towers and 21 meteorological stations, he said that the BMO will build 20 more monitoring towers in the city proper this year and make sure they can provide real-time warning messages