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Tourists shelter from the sun at the Palace Museum in Beijing, China, on June 9, 2024.
Hong Kong
CNN
—
A severe heatwave is expected to spread across much of northern China this week, with some areas hitting record highs, according to China’s meteorological agency.
The heatwave that began on Saturday has already triggered government weather warnings and made it the country’s hottest spring in history.
The National Weather Service issued an orange heat alert, the second-severe heat warning, on Monday as extreme heat hit the north.
Seven national weather stations in coastal Shandong province recorded their highest temperatures for early June on Sunday, while temperatures exceeded 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in northern Hebei province and western Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, according to the National Meteorological Center (NMC).
The heatwave is expected to spread further over the next few days, the NMC said in a statement.
Local governments have also issued warnings.
Beijing issued its first yellow heat alert this summer on Saturday, warning residents to avoid going outdoors during the hottest parts of the day.
The warning came as tens of thousands of high school graduating students in China’s capital were finishing up their highly competitive two-day national college entrance exam, known as the gaokao. A school in Beijing’s Chaoyang district handed out free ice cream to parents who waited outside the gates in the sweltering heat, state media reported.
Zheng Zhihai, chief forecaster at the National Climate Center, told state media Global Times that temperatures were expected to be higher than normal in most parts of China this summer, with the number of hot days also being higher than usual.
Zhong said the high temperatures were linked to the El Niño phenomenon, a natural weather pattern that causes ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean to be higher than average.
China experienced its hottest spring on record this year, with the national average temperature from March to May hitting 12.3 degrees Celsius, the warmest since records began in 1961, according to the National Climate Center, and 12 national weather stations matching or beating previous records.
Meanwhile, parts of southern China have been hit by heavy rains for weeks, with record rainfall causing devastating floods in April in Guangdong province and one stretch of the Pearl River river bank experiencing its earliest onset of the flood season since records began in 1998.
China, the world’s biggest polluter, has been hit by relentless heatwaves and other extreme weather caused by the man-made climate crisis, making 2023 the hottest year on record.
China’s average temperature last year was 10.7 degrees Celsius, the highest on record since records began in 1961, the National Climate Center said, breaking the previous record of 10.5 degrees Celsius recorded in 2021, according to state news agency Xinhua.
China’s unusual warmth reflects a global trend, with scientists confirming that 2023 was officially the hottest year on record due to the combined effects of El Niño and climate change.
