As sweltering heat and opposing unrelenting rains wreaked havoc on Tuesday, July 12, several Chinese cities set new records for high temperatures. Local forecasts anticipate the weather extremes to last for days.
The country was issued red alerts on Tuesday, the highest level of the warning system, and cities took action to protect residents from the oppressive heat, which surpassed records for the month of July in several areas of eastern Jiangsu province and the nearby metropolis of Shanghai.
The 25 million residents of Shanghai, the largest metropolis in China, have been advised by the government to get ready for abnormally hot weather. Only 15 days have exceeded 40C in Shanghai since records have been kept in 1873.
According to the China Meteorological Administration, temperatures in Yixing, Jiangsu, reached a new record high of 41.3 degrees Celsius on Tuesday.
With 2.45 million views on the social media platform Weibo, the hashtag #Heatstroke was trending on social media in debates about hospital admissions for patients and the negative effects of prolonged heat exposure.
"This year's weather is really hot and abnormal, it has been more than 30 degrees Celsius for two months!", a Weibo user wrote.
Experts attribute the odd weather to global climate change.
Parts of the provinces of Sichuan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei, and Anhui, as well as the cities of Chongqing and Shanghai, had record-breaking high temperatures on Tuesday, ranging from 37 to 39 degrees Celsius.
Particularly, the cities of Zhaotong, Shaoxing, Ningbo, Jiaxing, and Huzhou in Zhejiang, as well as Changzhou and Wuxi in Jiangsu, experienced temperatures between 40 and 42 degrees Celsius.
Meanwhile, sections of the provinces of Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Shandong, Hebei, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, and the Inner Mongolia region were hammered by torrential rain.
Over the following few days, the extreme heat and rain are expected to continue.
The third furnace city, Wuhan, which is located in central China, is also expected to experience extremely high temperatures, humidity, and UV radiation.
Those who have been paying attention to China's climatic trends are no longer surprised by extreme weather, according to Prof. Faith Chan of the University of Nottingham in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo. The previous year, China experienced severe flooding.
"The reason behind this year's heatwave is the two anticyclones, including the Western Pacific subtropical high from the sea and the one formed on the Persian Plateau which has moved to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau," Chan said.
