Hong Kong academics warn hot nights to increase by 50%, this year’s record rainfall will be outstripped and call for coordinated response
- Extreme weather will become more common, with rainfall of 230mm in an hour possible and 50 per cent more very hot nights, researchers say
- Academics say multi-departmental team needed to deal effectively with future crises caused by weather
Academics have appealed to the Hong Kong government to set up an interdepartmental task force to tackle future extreme weather as they predicted that rainfall would outstrip the record set this year and that the number of hot nights would increase by 50 per cent by 2040.
The suggestion, unveiled on Monday alongside a list of recommendations, said the government had to develop a “proactive approach” to extreme weather, including “effective coordination” between its departments over forecasts and response implementation.
“The more important thing is whether or not the government has a cross-bureau action group to make sure that the plans are coordinated,” Edward Ng Yan-yung, an architecture professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who led the research project, said.
“Any one of the bureaus [alone] will not solve the problem,” he added.
The findings were unveiled by Chinese University’s school of architecture in collaboration with Hong Kong University (HKU) and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).
