Unusual Climatic Events in China
by Kate Schoener
China Meteorological Administration
The China Meteorological Administration is a state government institution that administers and oversees weather-related affairs throughout the state. Some examples of the CMA’s functions are to formulate policies, participate with the government in the decision-making processes after meteorological disasters, administer the national weather forecasting and warning services, organize meteorological research projects and administer metrological foreign affairs. The CMA’s website includes constant weather forecasts for cities around the country and links to current weather and climate related news. It also contains links to articles on climate change and how climate change affects China.
The China Meteorological Administration lists short articles about global climate change and related storm and flooding events in China here.
Deadly Typhoon Claims 164 Lives in China
The China Meteorological Administration has declared that Typhoon Rananim was the worst typhoon to hit mainland China since 1956. Rananim hit the eastern province of Zhejiang on August 12th and by the 17th had already killed 164 people with at least 24 still missing in the debris left in its aftermath. Rananim also injured more than 1,800 people while affecting the lives of about 13 million people in the Zhejiang province. Only a few days after the storm hit land, it had already caused a direct economic loss of 18.1 billion yuan, which corresponds to 2.2 billion US dollars. The storm ruined houses, killed livestock, destroyed 1,163 km of road, damaged water treatment facilities and cut off power and communication. Rananim was the 14th typhoon to hit mainland China this season. Using new equipment from foreign countries, the China Meteorological Administration and the Central Meteorological Station were able to forecast the storm and evacuate 467,000 people which minimized the possible death toll.
More extreme weather events had happened last year than normal in China.
Meteorologists in China claim that more extreme weather events, such as flood, drought, and hot weather, occurred in 2003 than usually occur. The intensities of some of these events broke weather records, which have been recorded since 1961. 2003 was marked with severe droughts and high temperatures in the south and an extremely wet season with almost record setting flooding in the north. Climate changes associated with global warming act as one of the main causes of the dramatic climatic events occurring throughout China. Meteorologists predict higher precipitation in north China this spring, which will lead to fewer sandstorms.
Southern China Sees Hot Weather
This summer Chinese meteorologists have already seen especially
hot temperatures in southern China. The extremely high temperatures have been occurring since late July with the hottest temperature of the summer recorded at 38 degrees Celsius in Hangzhou, which is the capital of the Zhejiang province. Meteorologists predict that this hot spell will continue in southern China.
Asia Urged to Step up Research on Extreme Weather
Asian scientists and meteorologists acknowledge that more research is needed about extreme weather events in Asia. According to the World Meteorological Organization, WMO, 43 percent of the world’s natural disasters that occurred between 1991 and 2000 occurred in Asia, which brought much death and destruction to the world’s most populous country. The WMO claims that between 1991 and 2000 2,035 climatic disasters occurred in Asia causing $40.35 billion US dollars worth of damage. The natural geography of Asia causes monsoons to hit the region because of its proximity to the Pacific Ocean. Monsoons are closely linked to unusual climatic and weather events and thus, extreme and damaging climatic events are more likely to occur in Asia than on other continents.
World Meteorological Organization
The World Meteorological Organization is a non-governmental organization and a specialized United Nations Agency that has 187 member states and territories. Because of its association with the UN, the WMO helps facilitate the exchange of information between states worldwide on climate, atmospheric and weather related events. The WMO’s website provides more information on the organization as well as links to their various publications and programs associated with climate change and unusual weather occurrences.
WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 2003.
The World Meteorological Organization, which is a United Nations group, states in a 2003 report that heavy monsoon rains hit China’s Yellow River basin and killed almost 2000 people. The death toll though did not exceed those caused by flooding in that region of China in 1991 and 1998. Also in 2003, the same region experienced a drought season that was the worst in fifty years.
National Climatic Data Center
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center maintains a comprehensive webpage that directs visitors to other sites, tables, graphs, and written reports describing various climatic events. An example of a link which is particularly relevant to extreme weather and climatic events in China is the Extreme Weather and Climate Events site. This site can direct visitors to other sites such as Worldwide Weather and Climate Events, Temperature Extremes and Drought, Global Climate Change and El Nino/La Nina. Each of these links contains reports, graphs, charts, and other descriptions of climatic events that have occurred recently all over the globe. The NCDC also writes monthly Climate and Global Hazards/Events Reports, both of which are organized by month and year on the webpages and document extreme weather and climatic events that have occurred in China and throughout the world. Here is an example of one of these reports.
August 2003 flooding in northern China
According to the Global Hazards and Significant Events database compiled by NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, flooding, landslides, and Typhoon Dujuan caused the deaths of 86 people and over $700 million in damage in China’s northern province of Shaanxi in August and early September of 2003. Heavy rain poured down for twelve days causing the worst flooding in forty years.
Summer 1998 Flooding in China
Globally, the summer of 1998, and the entire year, was the hottest summer on record as compared to 1880-1997 averages. The higher temperatures caused many extreme weather and climatic events to occur around the world, including massive flooding in three regions of China. NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center describes these floods and other extreme weather phenomena in its report entitled Climatic Extremes of the Summer of 1998. The Chinese floods occurred between June and August of 1998 along the Yangtze River in south central China, in southern China near the Gulf of Tonkin, and across the north near the Russian border. According to the Chinese government, these floods were the second worst to hit the country in 130 years and caused 3656 deaths and an estimated $20 billion US dollars in damage.
Extreme Weather and Climate Change
A report by Environment Canada, entitled Extreme Weather and Climate Change, details what has occurred globally in the past few decades with respect to extreme weather events and climate change. The article offers straightforward, yet comprehensive, descriptions and explanations of phenomena such as El Nino, hurricanes and global warming. Throughout the article, the authors occasionally refer to extreme weather events that have occurred in China recently, such as the series of floods in 1996 that killed over 3,000 people and caused economic losses of over $20 billion US dollars.
Indications of Climate Change – Recent Extreme Global Weather Events
A Friends of the Earth International Climate Change Briefing quotes the New York Times as reporting on July 30, 2000 that a new desert is forming on the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China. This region had been a plentiful grassland area that Chinese and Tibetan herders rely on for their survival. Scientists attribute the recent growth of the desert to overgrazing, the hottest decade on record, and additionally, three consecutive years of drought.
Rapid Urbanization in China
According to a June 23, 2004 article in Science Daily, some researchers believe that the increased temperatures around the world caused by global climate change are exacerbated in southeastern China because of rapid, localized urbanization. Greenhouse gases that are contributing to current global warming have caused “a 0.9 degrees F (0.5 degrees C) increase in global temperature in the 20th century. [Scientists] predict this increase will continue through the 21st century and cause continued increases in extreme weather, rising sea levels, and the retreat of glaciers and polar ice caps”. Researchers led by the Georgia Institute of Technology believe that "Human-induced changes in land use - such as urbanization, deforestation, and agricultural and irrigation practices - can affect local and regional climate and even large-scale atmospheric circulations….They may have changed climate as much as greenhouse gases over some particular regions of land" (). The researchers do not yet know the extent of the effect of increased urbanization on unusual climatic events, but they do see definite connections between the rapid urbanization in southeastern China over the past twenty-five years and rising temperatures in the region, which may influence these large-scale and unusual weather patterns.
China’s Warming Climate Worries Experts
The China Internet Information Center posts on its website a description of an interview between a Science Times reporter and Ding Yihui, a special advisor on climate change for the China Meteorological Administration and a former co-chair of the International Panel on Climate Change. The article describes how climate change affects the land and oceans surrounding China and steps that Professor Ding feels are necessary to attempt to abate the effects on China of global climate change.
