Hong Kong Observatory Director Lam Chiu-ying says, in the coming year the Observatory will focus on providing the best possible weather service to support the Olympics, including weather observations, and forecast and warnings for the equestrian competition venues in Hong Kong.

The observatory will run a 'now casting' system to support its Beijing counterparts in serving the Olympics, together with a tailor-made weather information service to cater to Hong Kong's windsurfing team competing in Qingdao.

For this year's weather, Lam predicts six to eight tropical cyclones coming within 500km of Hong Kong as the La Nina phenomena will continue into spring. Annual rainfall is expected to be near normal.

Lam also noted Hong Kong could lose its winter, forecasting the number of very hot days and hot nights will rise in the coming century.

He said taking into account various greenhouse gas emission scenarios and urbanization, there will be a temperature rise of up to 6.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

In summer there will be more hot nights with a minimum temperature at or above 28 degrees. By the end of the century there could be up to 54 hot nights a year, compared with 15 at the end of the last century.

The number of very hot days with a maximum temperature at or above 33 degrees will also increase to up to 19 per year compared to seven at the end of the last century.