Tourism and weather go hand in hand with new regional plan
Weather is a key factor for tourists, influencing their decision on places they'd like to visit.
To provide better weather information services for tourists around the Yangtze River Delta region, this year the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau is set to build a regional tourism weather service center, Feng Lei, deputy head of the bureau, said.
According to Feng, the Yangtze River Delta has rich resources for travel, but it largely depends on the weather. Their preliminary idea is to provide meteorological travel advice all day long.
"Through the service, it can be ensured that there will always be some sites for travelers to visit under different weather conditions, except for dangerous weather," Feng told Shanghai Daily.
"For example, some local attractions will have a special charm under gloomy and wet weather, and it's nice to wander around the 'sea of clouds' on Mount Huangshan when there is fog," said Feng. "Shutterbugs sometimes would like to take a bird’s-eye picture of the city from the top of Shanghai Tower in foggy weather, when it looks quite special."
Feng said if the weather is really bad and not suitable for outside activities, they will recommend indoor ones like exhibitions.
Combining the weather education resources of the region, they will also design some meteorological tour routes with some related organizations.
Ahead of the first China International Import Expo, hosted in the city last year, the bureau launched a Yangtze River Delta integrated service platform on the regional environment and meteorology. Cooperating with weather authorities in the other three provinces of the region — Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Anhui — the platform monitors the whole region's weather conditions and collects statistics for analysis.
One function of the platform is pollution observation and evaluation, which can help find the source and transmission route of pollutants. That can enable weather authorities to make customized plans for pollution prevention.
In the future, the bureau will expand the platform's coverage to more meteorological fields and use more high-tech means to give detailed data.
Saturday was World Meteorological Day — this year's theme was "The Sun, the Earth and the Weather."