Beijing [China], July 17 (ANI): China’s meteorological department has issued a high-temperature warning for 12 days as severe heat waves grip the country, affecting 900 million people and over half of the national territory within a week. The prolonged heatwaves have threatened crops and people’s lives and pushed China’s power usage to record-breaking levels, the Global Times reported.
The National Meteorological Center of the China Meteorological Administration said that the heatwaves that continued to affect the regions across China since June 13, will last until at least mid-August, the Global Times reported.
The heat waves of over 40 degrees Celsius would strike regions including the southeastern part of Northwest China’s Shaanxi and the northeastern part of East China’s Zhejiang, the National Meteorological Center said.
A senior researcher at the National Climate Center affiliated with the China Meteorological Administration, Sun Shao said that the heatwave in 2022 has come earlier, and the average temperatures for June have hit the highest since 1873. Turpan city of Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region which is known as the hottest and driest region in China recorded temperatures above 37 degrees Celsius as well as the southeastern parts, parts of Shanghai, East China’s Fujian, Central China’s Henan, and Hunan, and Southwest China’s Chongqing also surpassed the temperature above 37-degree celsius, the Global Times reported.
Since June, China has experienced this year’s first regional hot weather. In total, 71 national weather stations across China have broken records with the highest temperature recorded at 44.2 C in Lingshou, North China’s Hebei Province.
China’s Meteorological Center said that the south and southeast parts of China will witness hot weather until 26 July. From July 31 to August 15, most regions of the country will record temperatures higher than the previous years, the Global Times reported.
Some cities in southern China have been gripped by the dual challenges of heatwaves and sporadic clusters of COVID-19 infections. For the third time this summer, Shanghai issued a red alert, the highest in China’s four-tier, a colour-coded weather warning system for extreme heat on Thursday, as temperatures were expected to hit 40 C and above.
Shanghai recorded the highest temperature of 40.9 C on Wednesday, a figure not eclipsed since 1973. Hangzhou in East China’s Zhejiang issued 54 red warnings of extreme heat on Tuesday, breaking the number of local heat warnings issued on a single day. Notably, the city which recently emerged from a severe outbreak is also seeing rising COVID-19 cases, with 26 local cases including 24 asymptomatic cases reported on Sunday, as per the National Health Commission.
Apart from this, the Chinese mainland reported around 600 new cases of COVID-19, marking the number as the highest daily tally in the month of July. Over the past three days, the daily tally in the Chinese mainland has surpassed 400. As per the official data on Sunday, 106 new cases with 474 asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 were found in different provinces of the country on Saturday. The daily new cases are the highest reported in July 2022.
China has incurred severe effects on the livelihoods of its inhabitants in the first half of 2022 as a result of rigorous lockdowns and demanding testing procedures in different parts of the nation. The economic impact of the zero-COVID strategy has also dented income. Fiscal revenue fell 4.8 per cent on the year for the four months through April, according to the Finance Ministry, owing mainly to tax refunds aimed at supporting businesses. (ANI)
