On the morning of 9 June, Prof. Lu Yongxiang attended the nameplate-unveiling ceremony to mark the official inauguration of the Chinese-Russian Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics in Moscow.

Prof. Lu put forward a proposal to co-establish a joint research body during his visit to Russia in 2004, which received positive response from the Russian academy's leadership. On 16 September 2006, the two sides concluded an agreement for the co-establishment of a joint lab on atmospheric physics.

According to the agreement, the lab will put its research priorities on 11 research topics, including climatic change over the Euro-Asian continent, its inter-relationship with human health, air pollution and development of mega-cities. On 17 May, the Laboratory was officially inaugurated at the CAS Institute for Atmospheric Physics in Beijing.

The establishment of the Lab would be the best gift submitted to the Chinese Year in Russia, acting as a symbol to the two countries' strategic partnership, says Prof. Lu. He hoped the lab would become a paradigm for the S&T cooperation between the two countries, capable of raising the research scholarship for both sides in this aspect, training more competent atmospheric physicists and promoting the disciplinary advancement of the whole subject.