This week 221 registered participants from a Norwegian education and research delegation will visit China. The Minister of Research and Higher Education, Iselin Nybø, is leading the delegation and the Nansen-Zhu Centre in Beijing will be one of the hosts on the program. The delegation includes strong participation from former and existing partners of the Nansen-Zhu International Research Centre (NZC) in Bergen.

- 15 years after the establishing of the Nansen-Zhu Centre, this visit is a recognition of our research and the important collaboration between Norway and China, says co-director Yongqi Gao at Nansen-Zhu Centre and research director at NERSC. Gao was just finishing his PhD in Bergen at the time he got the request to take a key role in the collaboration between Norway and China. – It has been an interesting travel based on good relationships between research societies and we can definitely describe this as a success and role model for future collaboration between the two countries, says Gao.

You can find the official program and book of seminars here

In Beijing: Huijun Wang (left), founding director of NZC and former director-general of IAP (left) and Yongqi Gao, co-director of NZC, research director at NERSC

In 2002 Nansen Environmental Remote and Sensing Center (NERSC) and Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP)/Chinese Acedemy of Sciences (CAS) took an initiative to establish The Nansen-Zhu Centre. They brought along three different partners (the University of Bergen, the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research and the Peking University). One year after, the former Norwegian Minister of Environment, Børge Brende, together with representatives of Chinese authorities formally opened the NZC 4^th of November 2003. NZC was named in the honor and spirit of the distinguished scientists Fridtjof Nansen from Norway and Kezhen Zhu from China.

From the official opening in 2003: Norwegian Minister of Environment, Børge Brende

Today the Nansen-Zhu Centre still operates as a non-profit joint venture between Norway and China located at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAP/CAS) in Beijing, China. NZC has six partners now: IAP/CAS, the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC), Bergen, Norway, the University of Bergen (UoB), Bergen, Norway, the Uni Research AS (Uni), Bergen, Norway, the Peking University (PKU), Beijing, China, and the Nanjing University (NJU), Nanjing, China. In 2014 the Nansen-Zhu Centre was awarded with the prestigious Chinese National Science Award for the theoretical and technological studies on climate prediction.

National Science Award 2014: HJ. Wang, K. Fan, JQ. Sun, DB. Jiang, XJ. Gao

The overarching goal of the NZC is to make a significant contribution to climate research and training with emphasis on tropical and high-latitude regions, and the interactions between these regions, for past, present and future climate.

- The major goal for the visit is to strengthen the relationship and collaboration with China. There is lot of interest to establish contacts, partners and collaboration with Chinese researching and education societies. This takes time and we have built and invested in these relationships over many years through personal contacts, joint projects and exchange of students. This is valuable factors we can share during this week. We are looking forward to hosting the Norwegian delegation, participating in seminars and also taking part of an alumni here in Beijing arranged by the University of Bergen, says Yongqi Gao.