The meteorological bureau in the sleepy town of Shouxian in eastern China was buzzing with excitement. It was May 2008, and the spacious courtyard was littered with sophisticated remote-sensing instruments that had just arrived on loan from the United States Department of Energy (DoE). The bureau had been expecting the equipment earlier, but it had been held up by Chinese customs officials for more than two months.rnA group of climate researchers and government officials from China and the United States eagerly inspected the new arrivals, which included a cloud radar, a tailor-made lidar (a radar-like instrument that sends out laser beams rather than microwaves) and sensors for studying various features in the atmosphere and the radiation from the Sun. "We can do great things with these here," said Zhanqing Li, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Maryland at College Park, who was leading the Sino-American collaboration.
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