Climate crisis is pushing up temperatures in China at a rate faster than the global average and triggering extreme weather events more frequently, a new government report said this week.
From 1951 to 2020, the average annual surface temperature in China showed a significant upward trend, with a warming rate of 0.26 degrees for every 10 years, it said.
The Blue Book on Climate Change published this week by China’s National Climate Centre (NCC) said that the last 20 years have been the warmest since the beginning of the 20th century. It also said that 9 of the 10 warmest years since 1901 have been recorded in the 21st century.
The NCC is country’s top climate research centre and affiliated with China Meteorological Administration (CMA).
Glaciers in China, the source of many transnational rivers, are also showing an “accelerated melting trend”, the report said, adding that China is a “sensitive area”, which has been significantly affected by climate crisis.
“From 1961 to 2020, China’s climate risk index showed an upward trend, and from 1991 to 2020, the average climate risk index (6.8) in China increased by 58% from the 1961-90 average (4.3),” the report added.
China has been witnessing higher daytime temperatures – this July was hotter than previous years and the second-hottest since 1961 – while precipitation nationwide in July increased by 3.2% compared with previous years, the Sixth Tone news website said in its report, quoting the Blue Book.
Sea levels off China’s coastal areas are rising as well at a worrying pace. “From 1980 to 2020, the rate of sea level rise along China’s coast was 3.4 mm per year, higher than the global average for the same period. In 2020, sea levels along China’s coast will be 73 mm higher than the 1993-2011 average, the third-highest level since 1980,” the report added.
The report added that the incidence of extreme weather events such as high temperature and heavy precipitation has increased.
From 1961 to 2020, the number of extreme heavy precipitation events in China had increased, it said, adding that the number of extreme low temperature events decreased.
“… and the number of extreme high temperature events increased significantly since the mid-1990s, and the average intensity fluctuation of typhoons landing in China since the late 1990s increased,” it said.
The CMA report comes within weeks of devastating floods in the central Chinese province of Henan, which killed over 300 people and affected millions more.
During the floods, termed as an extreme weather event by experts, the provincial capital of Zhengzhou recorded a year’s worth of rainfall in a day, flooding large swathes of the city.
The Chinese report coincided with a report released by Greenpeace East Asia on Thursday, which said “scorching temperatures are becoming much more frequent in cities across East Asia”.
The Greenpeace report collated data from 57 cities across mainland China, Korea and Japan, which found that hot weather was arriving earlier in the year in more than 80% of cities.
China is committed to achieving its major targets on fighting climate crisis, including realising a carbon emissions peak in 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality in 2060, President Xi Jinping said at the World Leaders’ Climate Summit in April this year.
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