Photo: VCG
Summers in China are rarely comfortable. But they’re increasingly becoming unbearable.
Swaths of the country baked in July as the mercury rose significantly above 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit). Several cities posted record-busting temperatures.
And things are only going to get worse. Extremely hot summer temperatures will likely become the “new normal” in China sometime in the 2030s, Ding Yihui, one of the country’s foremost climate scientists, said Sunday at an event in the southwestern city of Chongqing addressing climate change adaptation.
Scientists say that global heating and climate change increase the likelihood of such heat waves and potentially make them more deadly. According to a study published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications, an increase in global heating of between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels could cause tens of thousands of extra deaths in China’s cities per year.
Yet despite the grim prognosis, China is struggling to adapt its infrastructure to the realities of climate change. In addition to tackling the root causes of the problem, “much more attention must be paid to monitoring the impacts of climate change and adapting to avoid the worst consequences,” Liu Junyan, a climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia who was not involved in the study, told Caixin in an email.
Read the full story later today on Caixin Global.
Contact reporter Matthew Walsh (matthewwalsh@caixin.com)
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