China faces another summer of blisteringly hot temperatures, raising the likelihood of extreme weather events across the country, government experts warned on Monday.

This will be China’s third consecutive summer of exceptionally hot weather, following two years marked by historic floods, droughts, and wildfires that claimed lives and pushed the country’s infrastructure to the limit.

Most Chinese regions will experience higher-than-normal temperatures this summer, with the mercury rising above 35 degrees Celsius more frequently than the historical average, according to Zheng Zhihai, chief weather forecaster at the National Climate Center.

Short-term heat waves will sweep across southern, eastern, and northern China, as well as the western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, with some areas facing “extreme high-temperature events,” Zheng added.

The scorching temperatures in southern China are linked to the El Niño effect — a climate pattern that causes rising temperatures around the world — which has intensified subtropical highs in the region.

Public concern about extreme heat waves has been rising in China in recent days, with the recent heat deaths in India receiving widespread media coverage and trending on the microblogging platform Weibo.

China is particularly vulnerable to the effects of global warming. Temperatures in the country are expected to rise further than in most other countries, especially in northern and western China, according to a climate risk report by the World Bank Group and Asian Development Bank.

Scorching temperatures, exacerbated by the urban heat island effect, will pose a “major” threat to economic productivity, energy supplies, and people’s lives in major Chinese cities, the report said.

In 2022, China experienced its worst heat wave in six decades, with 267 weather stations logging temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius. The searing temperature led to a series of disastrous events across the nation, ranging from wildfires and large-scale power outages to severe agricultural disruptions.

Last year, the country again faced an extremely hot summer, with temperatures 0.8 degrees Celsius higher than the historical average. The hot weather again triggered a number of natural disasters, with northern China experiencing a drought followed by devastating floods.

China is likely to face more extreme and unpredictable weather this summer — including heat waves, droughts, and floods — due to the end of the El Niño cycle, experts warned earlier this year. However, Zheng said the country was unlikely to face a heat wave as intense as the one that struck in 2022.

This year, regions located south of the Yangtze River are likely to be hit hardest by high temperatures, Zheng said.

(Header image: VCG)