China’s storm chasers seek thrill and awareness for climate change

BEIJING - Only 10 hours remained before Typhoon Muifa was due to make landfall in eastern China in September. Mr Su Dike and his teammates decided to head to Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, from Ningbo to “encounter” the storm.

“People may think we — storm chasers — are looking for excitement, but we actually shoulder the responsibility for each chase, as we need to get to the deepest point of a storm to get first-hand data that will help us to deal with future change,” he explains. Born in Chengdu in the southwestern province of Sichuan, Mr Su moved during his middle school days to Hangzhou in Zhejiang in the east where typhoons batter on an annual basis, fuelling his interest in meteorology.From whether to chase a storm, which city to land in and which route to take, to which spot to set up and record, Mr Su and his partner have to continuously make quick decisions in the 24 hours before a storm occurs.

Mr Su and his partner — more often than not 21-year-old Wang Lucheng, a senior student at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology — pick a random spot in the storm’s predicted path while on the road. “It can’t be too close to the storm, as the core location with heavy rain or hail will be life-threatening, but it can’t be too far away either. The best distance is between 5 and 10 kilometres from the storm,” he says.

The data collected during a chase can help with multidisciplinary studies, Mr Su adds, and some research institutions have contacted him about his data.With his photos and videos of storms, Mr Su aims to show their beauty from different angles and help raise people’s awareness of climate change. Only from such scenes can you witness what a typhoon is capable of, he says.

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