Chinese meteorologists are meticulously studying significant
typhoon data that have picked up by monitors successfully when the
recent tropical cyclone Vongfeng raged coastal areas in south
China's Guangdong Province since early this week.
Song Lili, a prestigious scientist with the provincial weather
bureau, said she and her colleagues had homed in the typhoon's
center and obtained 1.72 million items of statistical information
as Vongfeng landed at Wuchuan, Guangdong Province.
The wind speed one hour before the typhoon's arrival was 40 meters
per second, the fastest velocity ever recorded by the monitor, but
subsequently dropped to 20 meters per second when the typhoon
arrived on the coast. It accelerated approximately 20 minutes after
arrival but then gradually subsided, according to Song.
"This proves that we were precisely monitoring the eye of the storm
as the force of the wind reduced slightly because the air in the
typhoon's center tended to drop a little," said Song. "This rare
valuable data will be of great importance in our future
research."
Meanwhile, Chinese meteorologists also obtained a wealth of data
from another monitoring station at Yangjiang, which is situated to
the northeast of the typhoon center.
Prof. Zhou Mingyu, a noted atmospheric physicist and an ocean and
atmospheric forecasting specialist with the National Marine
Environmental Forecasting Center, who was at Yangjiang, said that
the tail of Vongfeng swept past the Yangjiang monitoring base and
more significant data was collected.
"What we have so far obtained can be applied to the related work on
the harnessing of energy and other fields. We will strive to use
our research outcome in our automatic meteorological observatories
at coastal areas so as to do a better job in monitoring the
development and the routes of other typhoons in the future," said
Zhou.
Meteorologists in the region will go on monitoring typhoons in
years ahead to continue their research.
"Typhoon research is in full swing and we can never hinge on a
single case for all the information we require. What is needed is
to have more new material available to study," said He Xiajiang,
also a distinguished meteorologist.
Research workers will present a study report on the current
information late next year.
China is among the major countries which are most affected by grave
typhoon disasters. A total of nine typhoons occurred last year
resulting in 231 deaths and 17.65 billion yuan (US$2.13 billion) in
economic losses.
(Xinhua News
Agency August 24, 2002)