China's average temperature rose by 0.8°C last year?
The average temperature in China will increase significantly in 2023. According to the monitoring of the National Climate Center, the national average temperature in 2023 will be 10.7°C, 0.8°C higher than normal, significantly exceeding the 10.5°C in 2021, making it the warmest year since 1961. The warmest months of the year are February, March and June~October, and they are unusually warm from late winter to early spring and from summer to late autumn.
Similarly, the pace of global warming will accelerate again in 2023. Due to the magnitude and speed of global warming, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced in its Interim Report on the State of the Global Climate 2023 that 2023 was the hottest year on record on record, with the global average annual temperature about 1.4°C above the pre-industrial baseline, based on data from the previous 10 months. Monitoring data from many domestic and foreign institutions show that since June 2023, the world has set a record for the warmest month in the same period in history for six consecutive months.
The pace of global warming has not stopped, but has a tendency to accelerate, which is incompatible with and inconsistent with the purpose of the Paris Climate Change Conference, and the main reasons are as follows:
One is that the key factors influencing global warming trends have not changed – the total emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have not decreased. According to the latest Global Carbon Budget Report, fossil carbon dioxide emissions will hit a record high in 2023, up 1.1% from 2022. Greenhouse gas levels continue to rise, sea surface and sea level rise are at record highs, Antarctic sea ice is hitting new lows, and extreme weather is destroying lives and livelihoods every day, according to a report released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on the opening day of COP28. 2023 broke several climate records (greenhouse gases, global temperature, sea surface temperature, ocean heat content, sea level rise, cryosphere), and the world is warming at an unprecedented rate. UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned in the summer of 2023 when many parts of the world faced a heatwave: the era of global warming is over, and the era of global boiling has arrived.
Second, El Niño events in the tropical Pacific mainly heat the atmosphere through surface latent heat fluxes, regulate the vertical energy convergence of the atmosphere, and then change the heating rate of the tropical atmosphere, resulting in the intensification of global warming. The 2023 El Niño event has dramatically increased the likelihood of record-breaking heat, triggering more extreme heat on land and at sea, making the challenge even more severe. At present, El Niño has entered a peak period, with the Niño 3.4 index approaching 2.0°C. The strong return of El Niño has led to frequent extreme weather events and the resurgence of tropical diseases.
Global warming and El Niño events have further amplified the frequency and intensity of extreme weather, resulting in a series of compound meteorological disasters. April 2023 will be the warmest in Asia's history, and global warming will intensify from May, with extreme high temperatures in Europe and the United States becoming the main theme in summer. In July, states such as Arizona and California in the United States were hit by scorching heat, the Amazon rainforest in South America experienced a drought rarely seen in a century, and many parts of southern Europe and North Africa also experienced persistent and record-breaking high temperatures, with extreme heat of 48.2°C, 49°C and 50.4°C reported in Italy, Tunisia and Morocco respectively. The prolonged high temperature around the Mediterranean Sea directly heated the sea surface, causing the westerly belt low pressure system to develop into Hurricane "Daniel" over the warm ocean of the Mediterranean, which approached the northern coastal area of Libya on September 9, 2023, and made landfall in Benghazi, Libya on the 10th. Heavy rainfall from the hurricane caused the collapse of two dams upstream of Delna, leading to flooding and humanitarian catastrophe in Libya.
Prolonged temperature increases also increase the risk of forest fires. The 2023 Canadian wildfire season lasted more than five months, with a cumulative burned area of more than 180,000 square kilometers. The fires caused severe smoke pollution and carbon emissions of more than 400 million tons, the wildfires on Maui Island in Hawaii in August 2023 killed hundreds of people, and many historical sites and natural landscapes were seriously threatened or even reduced to ashes, becoming the deadliest wildfire in the United States in a century, and in the same month, wildfires in northeastern Greece that lasted for more than ten days killed dozens of people. In late October 2023, as the Horn of Africa region entered the rainy season, Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia all experienced persistent torrential rains and flooding. Extreme heat weather around the world lasts for a long time, has a large impact range, and historical extremes are constantly being broken.
Undoubtedly, China's Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei extreme weather in 2023 is the most indicative. The spring sandstorm weather has been silent for many years and has begun to increase again, from early summer to July, four consecutive rounds of high temperature and heat wave baptism, a heavy rainstorm in 140 years caused flooding disasters in the Haihe River Basin, an extremely warm season in autumn, three rounds of cold wave strong cooling process in November, and the temperature at the end of the year warms up and fog-haze rises. Affected by multiple factors such as the remnant circulation and topography of "Dusuri", the historical extreme heavy rainfall process occurred in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and other places from July 29 to August 2, 2023, and the intensity of the regional rainfall process exceeded that of "August 3~5" in 1996, "7.21" in 2012 and "July 18~20" in 2016, which is rare in history.
In the face of the new characteristics of extreme weather and climate events in the context of global warming, it is necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide and methane as an important task. At present, there are still shortcomings in China's risk management capabilities to deal with extreme events. In order to prevent major disaster risks, ensure the overall security of the country, and scientifically respond to extreme weather, I suggest that: first, the prevention of climate change risks should be incorporated into the national security system, second, the capacity of climate change adaptation should be strengthened, and an early warning system for climate security should be established, third, scientific research on climate change risk prevention should be strengthened, and the capacity of meteorological disaster risk management should be improved, and fourth, the scientific dissemination of disaster prevention and mitigation should be strengthened, and the public's ability to prevent disaster risks and awareness of climate change should be improved.
(The author is the chief expert of climate services of China Meteorological Administration and the second-level researcher of the National Climate Center)
