China recorded its warmest autumn this year since records began decades ago, its National Climate Center announced Wednesday.
China is the main emitter of greenhouse gases which scientists say drive global climate change and make extreme weather events more frequent.
Beijing has pledged to bring planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions to a peak in 2030 and to net zero emissions in 2060.
“During this year’s autumn season (September 1 to November 30), the national average temperature was 11.8 degrees Celsius, 1.5 degrees higher than the average year, the highest since 1961,” the center announced on its social media account.
China has already registered this year its Hottest July on recordand also the hottest month in the history of observations.
August was also the warmest month on record, capping a summer of extreme weather conditions, from scorching heat waves to torrential rain.
Global warming may make these weather events more frequent not only due to high temperatures but also due to the domino effect of additional heat in the atmosphere and seas.
Warmer air can hold more water vapor, and warmer oceans mean more evaporation, resulting in more intense rain and storms.
In China this fall, most regions experienced temperatures 1 to 2 degrees Celsius above average, while parts of central, eastern, southwest and northwest China experienced average temperatures 2 to 4 degrees Celsius higher than average during the period. compared to previous years, the National Climate Center said Wednesday.
“This year is much warmer than last yearand the winter is also much warmer,” wrote a user from the eastern province of Shandong on the social media platform Weibo.
“Last year around this time I remember it was almost snowing. The temperature had dropped to minus four or five degrees. “Now it’s only eight degrees,” the source added.
Sixteen provinces and regions, including Liaoning, Tianjin and Chongqing, recorded their highest average autumn temperatures since 1961.
And daily maximum temperatures at 375 national weather stations exceeded or equaled local historical fall extremes.
The average number of high temperature days across the country in September also hit a record high for the same period in history, while Sichuan, Chongqing and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River suffered heat and drought in early autumn, the center said. climatic.
Residents of the southern city of Guangzhou experienced a record-breaking summer this year: state media reported there were 240 days when the average temperature was above 22°C (71.6 degrees Fahrenheit), breaking the record for 234 days established in 1994.
Es “virtually certain” that this year will be the hottest in recorded global historywith warming of more than 1.5 °C, the EU climate observatory Copernicus said in November.
Copernicus said that in 2024 the temperature would probably be more than 1.55 degrees Celsius (2.8 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average of 1850-1900, the period before fossil fuels were burned on an industrial scale.
(with information from AFP)
