Shanghai reports centenary temperature average rise

SHANGHAI—The average temperature in Shanghai has gone up 1.4 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years and the trend will continue in future. Tang Xu, Shanghai Meteorological Bureau director, predicted if such a situation of climatic warming went unchecked, there would be a higher possibility for Shanghai to be hit head-on by more extreme weather disasters. These included strong typhoons, tornados, prolonged drought and heat waves.
He promised the bureau would tighten its efforts to analyze factors leading to climatic changes and in forecasting weather changes to cope with and be prepared for such changes.
While stepping up their efforts to analyze the impact and risk of weather changes and draft standards for countermeasures, meteorological researchers were told to focus their research on the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on climate changes in addition to regional climate changes from the development of satellite towns. It was also important to adjust the industrial mix, vigorously develop clean energy and reduce emissions of greenhouse gas, Tang said.
He disclosed the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialized organization of the United Nations, had decided to carry out a project in Shanghai to showcase its establishment of a multiple disaster warning system. Experience gained from the experiment would be expanded to other international cities.
In 2007, Shanghai, host of the 2010 World Expo, experienced its hottest year since the city began recording the weather in 1873. Year-round, it had an average temperature of 18.4 Celsius degrees, said local meteorologists. The year’s average temperature was 0.1 degree higher than that of 2006, according to Shen Yu, a bureau senior engineer.
The Heilongjiang Province in the northernmost part of China, bordering Russia, is getting hotter because of global warming and faces the threat of worsening drought. Statistics with the Heilongjiang Provincial Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters indicate the annual temperature averaged 4.5 degrees Celsius last year in the province, the highest in 47 years. The figure was about 1.8 degrees higher than the previous yearly average.
Meteorologists with the Heilongjiang Meteorological Observatory said in January that the provincial capital Harbin, known as the “city of ice”, posted an average annual temperature of 6.6 degrees Celsius last year, the highest since meteorological records began in 1881. “The record high annual average temperature was not incidental. It was closely related to the global warming trend,” said Yin Xuemian, a senior meteorologist at the observatory.
More than 40 percent of the arable land in the province has been pestered with drought, totaling more than 4.6 million hectares, according to government statistics. Forecasters warned that the drought would continue throughout this spring and jeopardize the grain output in the area viewed as the barns of China.

—Xinhua