According to official media this week, China had its warmest year on record in 2023 as the world’s largest polluter dealt with a string of unrelenting heat waves and other extreme weather phenomena brought on by the climate disaster caused by human activity.
As the year went on, the nation struggled with intense heat waves that, according to officials, had arrived earlier and been more widespread and harsh than in previous years. As a result, daily and monthly temperature records were regularly broken.
China’s unusual temperature coincided with worldwide trends; experts have confirmed that 2023 will officially be the warmest year on record due to El Niño and climate change coupled.
According to the National Climate Centre, China’s average temperature for the previous year was 10.7 degrees Celsius, the highest since records were kept in 1961, as reported by state-run news agency Xinhua.
The previous record, which was established in 2021 at 10.5°C, is broken.
China Day, the official newspaper, stated that 127 meteorological stations nationwide registered the highest day temperatures ever.
The maximum temperature recorded there was 52.2°C on July 16 in Sanpu town, in the far western province of Xinjiang, near Turpan.
Hundreds of millions of people were harmed by the extended and relentless heat, which also severely taxed the nation’s electrical infrastructure. One of the biggest producers of coal-fired energy in the world, China Energy Investment Corporation, said in July that its daily electricity production had reached a record level.
Worries over food security in the second-biggest economy in the world were raised by reports of farm animals, including pigs, rabbits, and fish, dying from the intense heat and heavy rainfall in central China’s wheat fields.
In 2023, a similar scenario occurred all over the world, with numerous continents experiencing record-breaking heat waves and lethal heat waves, with a large portion of the planet being covered in unheard-before ocean heat.
The global temperature in 2023 will be more than 1.4 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels, according to analysis from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. This is getting near to the Paris Climate Agreement’s 1.5-degree barrier, over which experts say it will be impossible for ecosystems and people to adapt.
Abrupt peaks and valleys
On the other end of the spectrum, on January 22, Jintao town in Mohe, northern Heilongjiang province, recorded the lowest temperature ever recorded in China, which was -53° C.
Furthermore, sub-zero temperatures in December caused certain northern Chinese towns to reach their maximum heating capacity, resulting in the capital Bejing experiencing its longest cold wave since records began in 1951.
Aside from some of the worst rainfall in decades, China’s harsh weather caused flooding that destroyed millions of lives and cost billions of dollars in damages.
The National Climate Centre reports that in 2023, the daily rainfall recorded by 55 national weather stations reached its greatest point.
On July 28, Typhoon Doksuri made landfall in the southeast of Fujian province, bringing with it rainfall that drenched the 75 million-person province of Hebei as well as the nearby cities of Beijing and Tianjin.
According to Chinese authorities, flooding in those areas caused the loss of over a million homes, bridges, and highways in addition to roughly thirty fatalities.
The storm also delivered the most rain Beijing has seen in 140 years, posing a serious challenge to the area’s ability to withstand extreme weather, which scientists predict may grow more often as a result of climate change.
It is widely acknowledged by scientists that the climate crisis is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as heat waves, storms, and heavy rains. This trend is expected to continue as the world warms and human activity increases the burning of fossil fuels.
The International Energy Agency states that China is the largest polluter in the world, contributing about 30% of global emissions and more than half of the world’s coal consumption.
According to the World Bank, there is little hope for the world to meet its climate targets unless China can effectively cut its emissions that warm the earth and switch to sustainable energy.
According to a June study, China has been speeding the production of sustainable energy, and the nation is on course to quadruple its capacity for solar and wind energy and meet its 2030 clean energy objectives as early as 2025.
China and the US promised to significantly increase renewable energy consumption in November to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The nation also made a historic plea to move away from fossil fuels during the climate talks at the COP28 conference in Dubai in December.
According to Carbon Brief, China did not, however, formally sign a deal to double energy efficiency and treble renewable energy capacity by 2030.