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.

There were few people or cars on the road when they witnessed trees falling down under the force of strong winds and street lamps blinking out in the heavy rain. After some 10 minutes, the rain suddenly lightened and the wind turned limp: they were now in the eye of the typhoon.

“While chasing the storm, we collected a lot of data that can reflect the microscopic characteristics of typhoons. We hope the information can help people to better understand such storms,” Mr Su says in his video, recording this thrilling trip.

“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 (climate) change,” he explains.

In the past three years, the 21-year-old and his fellow storm chasers have visited over a dozen provinces, racking up a total distance of over 30,000km.

As a senior student at Communication University of China, majoring in photography, Mr Su spends almost all his spare time chasing the wind. He is also a popular meteorological science video blogger on Bilibili, a video-sharing platform popular with young Chinese. He posts videos of his storm-chasing adventures and uses them to try and popularise climate science.

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.

Moving with the wind

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.

Once a storm starts forming, they follow its growth and movement on radar and discuss whether to chase it or not.

The decision is usually made a day before whether the mission is a “go”. Once decided, Mr Su and his partner draw a circle on the route map that covers the location they predict will be the centre of the storm and find the nearest city.

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’s like throwing a dart on the map. Sometimes we drive into a field because we don’t know what the spot looks like,” Mr Su says.

Danger is an inevitable element in storm chasing.

Mr Wang says that they avoid mountains when they search for a position to observe and record the storm, as the heavy rainfall can cause mudslides. Nor will they choose unpaved roads which might result in the car getting stuck easily.

“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.

Mr Su says a storm moves fast and usually takes 10 to 20 minutes to pass overhead, but to catch that encounter, they need to chase one for the whole day.

“Each storm has its own temper, so the feeling is fresh. Once you ‘catch’ it, there’s a sense of accomplishment, and you want to chase more,” says Mr Su.

The data collected during a chase can help with multidisciplinary studies, Mr Su adds, and some research institutions have contacted him about his data.

Dialogue with nature

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.

“The bigger question is how we should better deal with climate change?” he adds.

As he gets to know storms better, Mr Su says that he finds they have a connection with things on the ground, including plants, animals and humans.

“The catastrophic nature of storms is quite a dialectical thing,” he says. For flora and fauna, a storm is a double-edged sword. It may provide a water source, yet with it may also come devastation. For people, he adds, storms can often be a disaster.

“But, on the other hand, because of our continuous struggle, and gamble against nature, our civilisation has been able to continue,” Mr Su concludes.

“After dealing with storms day by day, you develop a resonance with them, and it almost becomes a dialogue with them,” he says. CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK