• Submitted by: manso
• International
• 06 / 26 / 2011

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China should intensify preparations to deal with a growing risk of marine disasters in the next 10 years due to a worldwide increase in the last decade, experts warned.

"Partly because of global climate change, marine disasters have become more frequent in the world and have killed more than 300,000 people during the past 10 years," said Yu Fujiang, deputy director of the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center (NMEFC), quoted in news reports on Thursday.

"It was lucky that China was not hit by a catastrophic marine disaster during that period but the country is very likely to face increasing risks during the next 10 years," he said, noting that his predication was based on analyzing data from the past 60 years.

Marine disasters, including storm surges, extreme waves, sea ice and red tides, have hit China's coastal areas hard in the past.

By 2010, the country had 106 monitoring stations watching out for potential marine disasters, a sharp increase from the 66 it had in 2005, NMEFC statistics showed.

He said China plans to establish another 89 monitoring stations during the next five years.

From July to September, disastrous storm surges are likely to occur three to four times in China, greatly affecting the country's southeast coastal areas, NMEFC forecasters said on Wednesday.

Also, 13 or 14 tidal waves triggered by typhoons are likely to hit China during the same period, mainly affecting the East China Sea, Taiwan Straits and South China Sea, they said.

Source: PL