EXTREME WEATHER
Global warming, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, is not just about rising temperatures but the knock-on effect of all the extra heat in the atmosphere and seas.
Warmer air can hold more water vapour, and warmer oceans mean greater evaporation, resulting in more intense downpours and storms.
Impacts are wide-ranging, deadly and increasingly costly, damaging property and destroying crops.
In central Beijing, finance professional Xu Yici lamented that warmer-than-usual weather had affected the city’s traditional winter pastime of ice skating.
“There’s no ice in the Summer Palace. I was going to go ice skating at the Summer Palace but I didn’t get to do it this year,” Xu told AFP.
Dozens of people were killed and thousands evacuated during floods around the country last year.
In May, a highway in southern China collapsed after days of rain, killing 48 people.
Residents of the southern city of Guangzhou experienced a record-breaking long summer, with state media reporting there were 240 days where the average temperature was above 22 degrees Celsius, breaking the record of 234 days set in 1994.
Sichuan, Chongqing, and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River suffered from heat and drought in early autumn.
But Xue Weiya, an IT worker in Beijing, told AFP he believed “the Chinese government is doing a very good job of protecting the environment, so I don’t think the weather … will have a big impact on us”.
Globally, 2024 saw deadly flooding in Spain and Kenya, multiple violent storms in the United States and the Philippines, and severe drought and wildfires across South America.
Natural disasters caused US$310 billion in economic losses in 2024, Zurich-based insurance giant Swiss Re has said.
Under the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, world leaders pledged to limit global heating to well below 2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – and to 1.5 degrees Celsius if possible.
In November, the World Meteorological Organization said the 2024 January to September mean surface air temperature was 1.54 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average measured between 1850 and 1900.
