The weather agency says China will have its hottest year on record in 2024 | Weather News

In the past four years, China has entered its four hottest years since the first record of the same temperature in 1961.

China experienced its hottest year on record in 2024, a new high since comparable temperature records began more than 60 years ago, the country’s meteorologist said.

The national average temperature in 2024 was 10.92 degrees Celsius (51.66 degrees Fahrenheit), 1.03 degrees above 2023 and “the warmest year since full records began in 1961”, the China Meteorological Administration said on its news site on Wednesday night.

“The four hottest years on record were four years ago, and all of the hottest ten years since 1961 occurred in the 21st century,” the administration said.

Populous Shanghai, China’s financial hub, recorded its warmest year in 2024 since the city’s weather records began in 1873, data from the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau showed. The average temperature for the city was 18.8C (65.8F).

China already had its hottest month on record in July last year, along with its hottest August and warmest autumn on record.

Residents of the southern city of Guangzhou also experienced a record summer, with media reporting 240 days when the average temperature was above 22C (71.6F), breaking the record of 234 days set in 1994.

China’s hot weather is accompanied by strong typhoons and high rainfall, and dozens of people died last year and thousands were forced from their homes when floods swept across the country.

In May, a highway in southern China collapsed after four days of rain, killing 48 people, and Sichuan, Chongqing, and the middle Yangtze River regions were hit by heat and drought in early autumn.

Greenpeace warned last year of “China’s alarming new extreme heat conditions” and said that the hottest days were coming earlier this year and the size of China’s heat-affected areas was increasing.

“As a series of climate impacts hit China, people’s lives and livelihoods are affected,” the campaign group said.

The United Nations said in a year-end message on Monday that 2024 will be the warmest year on record globally.

Global warming, driven mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, is not just an increase in temperatures but the result of the collision of all the extra heat in the atmosphere and oceans. Warm air can hold more water vapor, and warmer oceans mean more evaporation, leading to storms and storms.

Zurich-based insurance giant Swiss Re has said that climate-related natural disasters will cause an estimated $310bn in economic losses by 2024.