The temperature record for mid-June was broken on Friday in Beijing with 39.4°C recorded in the Chinese capital when part of the country suffered a heat wave. High temperatures in China are not unusual in summer, especially in the arid west and south of the country.
To a lesser extent, Beijing residents are also used to the heat at this time of year. But China has been dealing with extreme weather and locally unusual temperatures in recent months, exacerbated by climate change, scientists say.
“Around 2:30 p.m. (0630 GMT), the temperature at the Observatory in the southern suburbs of Beijing reached 39.4°C, breaking the record for mid-June,” the China Meteorological Service said. The precedent dated back to June 13, 2000 (39.1°C), he said on the Weibo social network.
The announcement comes as the city of Beijing is on orange alert for severe heat, the second-highest level in China, while parts of neighboring Hebei province are on red alert. Temperatures in Beijing will remain high for the next three days with at least 37°C expected, according to weather services. “The public should reduce their outdoor activities and watch out for heat stroke,” they advocated.
“Tire Blowouts”
In the Chinese capital, the temperature on the bitumen locally exceeded 50°C, which can “easily damage the roads” and “cause tire blowouts”, warned a meteorologist quoted by the official news agency China news.
On Thursday, eight provincial capitals recorded the highest temperatures of the year, according to New China. Already last month, the economic capital Shanghai had experienced the hottest May day in more than a century (36.1°C). And China last year recorded its hottest August since records began in 1961, after weeks of a heat wave of unprecedented magnitude.
The UN has warned that the period 2023-2027 will almost certainly be the hottest on record on Earth, under the combined effect of greenhouse gases and the El Nino weather phenomenon. Global temperatures are expected to soon exceed the most ambitious target of the Paris climate agreements, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned.
Part of China experienced an unusually harsh winter earlier this year. A cold record had thus been broken in the town of Mohe (-53°C), on the border with Russia.