On June 12, 2025, Typhoon "Butterfly," the first typhoon of the year, was raging in the South China Sea. About 155 kilometers southeast of Sanya City, Hainan Province, on the sea surface, fierce winds were churning up 7-meter-high waves. A special "warrior" was steadfastly holding its position at the storm's center-an anchor-based buoy deployed by the National Marine Technology Center. Despite extreme sea conditions with winds exceeding 10 on the Beaufort scale and waves over 7 meters high, the buoy operated stably, successfully capturing high-precision real-time data from the typhoon's eye core area.
When the typhoon's center reached the area where the buoy was located, this Chinese moored buoy system recorded the critical data of the center's minimum air pressure of 987 hectopascals. After the typhoon passed, the anemometer's needle violently fluctuated, eventually settling at a maximum wind speed of 22.7 meters per second, while the adjacent wave sensor simultaneously recorded waves of 7.8 meters.
Typhoon "Butterfly" exhibited an extraordinary character from its inception. After forming in the central-western South China Sea on June 11, it did not follow the conventional path but instead moved along the coast of Hainan Island, prompting meteorology enthusiasts to jokingly refer to it as the "ultimate coastline master." Around 11 p.m. on June 13, this "Butterfly" finally landed for the first time along the coast of Dongfang City, Hainan Province, becoming the strongest typhoon to make landfall in Dongfang City since 1949. Historically, only Typhoon "Sanba" (No. 16 of 2023) had previously made landfall there. The following day at 12:30 p.m., it once again spread its wings, making a second landfall along the western coast of Leizhou City, Guangdong Province. The maximum wind speed near its center remained at 11 on the Beaufort scale (30 meters per second), with a minimum central pressure of 980 hectopascals.
While coastal residents were seeking shelter from the typhoon, researchers from the National Marine Technology Center were eagerly awaiting this natural challenge. The moored buoys deployed at the National Marine Comprehensive Test Site faced their most significant challenge since their development.
The buoy lived up to expectations, achieving a 100% data reception rate during the typhoon's passage, transmitting real-time key parameters such as wind speed, wind direction, air pressure, and water temperature. Profile observation data showed that the typhoon's passage intensified upper-layer ocean mixing, causing a decrease in water temperature, a reduction in salinity, an increase in flow velocity, and a significant deepening of the mixed layer. These valuable data confirm that China's buoy technology has entered the ranks of international leaders. As early as 2018, similar moored buoys withstood the test of Super Typhoon Mangkhut, with wind speed and sea surface current velocity data highly consistent with those from international standard moored buoys.
The core breakthrough of this early warning system lies in the intelligent reconstruction of the entire "sensing-transmission-decision-making" chain. The domestically developed titanium alloy buoys are equipped with Beidou short message communication modules, enabling data transmission to resume even in extreme sea conditions where satellite signals are disrupted, through multi-source satellite combination communication. For example, operational buoys from the Pearl River Estuary to Guangxi have upgraded to next-generation meteorological and hydrological sensors, improving wave monitoring accuracy to ±0.1 meters and controlling salinity measurement errors within 0.01 psu. More notably, the buoy system has been deeply integrated into the national marine big data platform "Marine Cloud," enabling real-time data sharing with meteorological and emergency departments, reducing warning response times to within 15 minutes.
This observation has demonstrated China's leading advantage in deep-sea buoy observation technology and laid a solid foundation for future extreme weather monitoring. The National Marine Technology Center of the Ministry of Natural Resources stated that in the future, it will rely on the National Marine Comprehensive Test Site (Deep Sea) to continuously optimize the construction of the National Global Marine Three-Dimensional Observation Network.
As global climate change intensifies, China is accelerating the construction of an integrated "air-land-sea" observation network. In the future, moored buoys and ocean buoys will further develop toward intelligence and cost-effectiveness: using AI algorithms to automatically identify precursors of marine disasters such as internal solitary waves, harnessing wave energy for power generation to achieve perpetual operation, and establishing a high-density observation network with 50-kilometer intervals in critical seas like the South China Sea. This "thinking maritime sensor system" is safeguarding coastal regions accounting for 60% of the national economy with technological innovation, writing China's solution for marine disaster prevention and mitigation.
