China builds record-breaking 100-metre observation tower in South China Sea
China has built the tallest environmental observation tower in the South China Sea, the country’s meteorological administration has said. Standing at 100 metres (330 feet) tall, the tower is almost three times higher than the previous tallest structure in the South China Sea and built to withstand super typhoons with wind speeds of over 200km/h (125mph), heavy waves, high humidity and high levels of salinity. It is equipped with sensors to collect round-the-clock, real-time data on wind speeds,...
By Holly Chik
China has built the tallest environmental observation tower in the South China Sea, the country’s meteorological administration has said.
Standing at 100 metres (330 feet) tall, the tower is almost three times higher than the previous tallest structure in the South China Sea and built to withstand super typhoons with wind speeds of over 200km/h (125mph), heavy waves, high humidity and high levels of salinity.
It is equipped with sensors to collect round-the-clock, real-time data on wind speeds, temperatures, humidity and air pressure at different altitudes.
Scientists say that with rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures, and increasing numbers of extreme weather events, there is a greater need for better monitoring of environmental conditions.
The South China Sea is one of the areas most at risk from typhoons and its geography – it is semi-enclosed by land – helps funnel typhoons towards southern China.
The administration said meteorologists had previously been unable to monitor atmospheric conditions at different altitudes, limiting the amount of information they could collect on extreme weather events such as typhoons and thunderstorms.
“The implementation of this project further strengthens the … monitoring and protection network in the South China Sea, providing important support for marine meteorological observation in the South China Sea,” China Meteorological News, the administration’s official newspaper, reported on Tuesday.
The tower can monitor changes in environmental conditions every 10 metres and an equipment platform at the top houses advanced radar to better monitor the movement and formation of thunderstorms.
In the future, further equipment such as devices to monitor waves, currents, sea surface temperatures and salinity could also be added to the tower to further improve environmental monitoring.
The structure was completed on June 17 off the coast of Yangjiang in Guangdong province.
It will next be towed to a position 80km from the city and roughly the same distance from the Leizhou Peninsula, the southern tip of Guangdong and from the island province of Hainan – one of the most common paths for typhoons.
Other large-scale environmental facilities in the waters include the South China Sea Mooring Array, which is made up of around 40 moorings, and was designed to monitor marine processes such as internal waves and changing currents.
The structure was described as “the largest in situ ocean observing system in marginal seas worldwide” in a paper written by scientists at the Ocean University of China and published in the Science Bulletin journal.
Earlier this year, some of the authors of the paper put forward a prototype framework for artificial intelligence-driven regional ocean forecasting, called the SCS Trident Model, the development of which could be supported by the mooring array.
They wrote in The Innovation that the impact of typhoons could “substantially impact offshore energy development, shipping safety, and disaster preparedness, generating urgent demand for high-resolution observations and accurate and rapid short-term forecasts”.