Climate

Searing heat in north China

People in north China have experienced an unusually hot Dragon Boat Festival (8-10 June), and the extreme weather is continuing. 

Since 8 June, daily temperatures in a large part of the region have reached or exceeded 35C. The heatwave is expected to last at least six days, with 10-13 June the hottest period, according to the China Meteorological Administration (CMA).

The CMA forecast that around 700,000 square kilometres would experience daily temperatures of 35C, almost three times the area of the United Kingdom. Temperatures in some places may break records.

“This high temperature process has been the strongest [in north China] since the beginning of this year, and characterised by its wide range, strong intensity and long duration,” said Zhai Yu, a Weather China analyst, as reported by The Paper.

Hebei is the hottest province, with daily temperatures in places reaching 43C. Several cities have issued the highest level of heatstroke-risk warnings. At 1pm on 11 June, eight weather stations in Hebei all exceeded 40C, Caixin reported. 

Extreme heat affects farming as well as health. On 11 June, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the CMA jointly issued an “agricultural high temperature and drought risk warning”, cautioning that seeding of corn and soybean could be delayed due to dry soil.

Before the hot summer, China had experienced an abnormally warm spring. The average temperature across the country in March to May was “1.4C higher than the same period in previous years, the highest since 1961,” according to data from the National Climate Centre, as reported by Upstream News.

Zheng Zhihai, chief forecaster at the National Climate Centre, believes that north China’s June heatwave is directly caused by global warming. 

China is not the only country experiencing unbearable heat. The Philippines, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries were badly affected in April. In India, at least 100 people died of extreme heat across the country in just three days from 30 May to 1 June, Dialogue Earth reported.

The World Meterological Organization reported this month that there is an 80% likelihood that in at least one of the next five years the annual average global temperature will temporarily exceed 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Read Dialogue Earth’s recent Q&A with Bangladesh’s chief heat officer.

-->
Cookies Settings

Dialogue Earth uses cookies to provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser. It allows us to recognise you when you return to Dialogue Earth and helps us to understand which sections of the website you find useful.

Required Cookies

Required Cookies should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

Dialogue Earth - Dialogue Earth is an independent organisation dedicated to promoting a common understanding of the world's urgent environmental challenges. Read our privacy policy.

Cloudflare - Cloudflare is a service used for the purposes of increasing the security and performance of web sites and services. Read Cloudflare's privacy policy and terms of service.

Functional Cookies

Dialogue Earth uses several functional cookies to collect anonymous information such as the number of site visitors and the most popular pages. Keeping these cookies enabled helps us to improve our website.

Google Analytics - The Google Analytics cookies are used to gather anonymous information about how you use our websites. We use this information to improve our sites and report on the reach of our content. Read Google's privacy policy and terms of service.

Advertising Cookies

This website uses the following additional cookies:

Google Inc. - Google operates Google Ads, Display & Video 360, and Google Ad Manager. These services allow advertisers to plan, execute and analyze marketing programs with greater ease and efficiency, while enabling publishers to maximize their returns from online advertising. Note that you may see cookies placed by Google for advertising, including the opt out cookie, under the Google.com or DoubleClick.net domains.

Twitter - Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news about what you find interesting. Simply find the accounts you find compelling and follow the conversations.

Facebook Inc. - Facebook is an online social networking service. China Dialogue aims to help guide our readers to content that they are interested in, so they can continue to read more of what they enjoy. If you are a social media user, then we are able to do this through a pixel provided by Facebook, which allows Facebook to place cookies on your web browser. For example, when a Facebook user returns to Facebook from our site, Facebook can identify them as part of a group of China Dialogue readers, and deliver them marketing messages from us, i.e. more of our content on biodiversity. Data that can be obtained through this is limited to the URL of the pages that have been visited and the limited information a browser might pass on, such as its IP address. In addition to the cookie controls that we mentioned above, if you are a Facebook user you can opt out by following this link.

Linkedin - LinkedIn is a business- and employment-oriented social networking service that operates via websites and mobile apps.