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CHINA CURRENTS
Heatwave Hits the Middle Kingdom
By Alistair Baker-Brian
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Many parts of China are well accustomed to swelteringly hot weather over the summer months. This is especially true during sanfu (三伏), the hottest part of summer, which falls between mid-July and August.
However, this year is markedly hotter than usual, with a heatwave that has already affected over 900 million people across the Middle Kingdom.
On July 10, the Xujiahui weather monitoring station in Shanghai recorded temperatures of 40.9 degrees Celsius, the hottest in the city since 1873.
Elsewhere in the country, weather stations in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong provinces also recorded temperatures above 40 degrees. In Sichuan, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Henan, Hebei and elsewhere, hightemperature warnings for heat exceeding 40 degrees were in place for 10 consecutive days in July.
From the beginning of June until July 13, only Heilongjiang and Liaoning provinces in Northeast China escaped high temperature warnings, though warnings for other extreme weather in the form of heavy rain were issued.
So, why the record-breaking heat?
Yuan Yuan is a director at China’s National Climate Center, an organization responsible for analyzing climate change patterns and the subsequent risk of natural disasters.
Yuan explains that in June 2022, the global average temperature rose by 0.4 degrees, the highest rise since 1979. Recent extreme heat in many places in the northern hemisphere has been caused by a combined strengthening of high pressure over the hemisphere’s subtropical region, including across the western North Pacific subtropical belt and the Atlantic high-pressure belt.
Under this sustained high pressure, the air is relatively dry and clouds are not easily formed, resulting in frequently high temperatures.
Make no mistake, China is not the only country in the northern hemisphere feeling the heat right now. Much of the southern United States has also seen temperatures exceeding 40 degrees; forest fires have broken out in Spain, France, Portugal and elsewhere in continental Europe. In the United Kingdom, it reached 40 degrees for the first time ever on record.
Good to know we’re not the only ones being sizzled right now.
