Drought, floods, typhoons imperil crops and power as extreme weather spoils China’s summer

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In the latest developments, more than 5,000 people were evacuated and rice fields were saturated following a dyke breach in Hunan province late on Friday

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A man walked on the dried out riverbed of the Jialing River, a major tributary of the Yangtze River, in Chongqing on 21 August 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE

Bloomberg

Published: 1:25pm, 8 Jul 2024

Another exceptionally hot summer, accompanied by drought, flooding and typhoons, is risking Chinese crop harvests and lifting power demand as climate change creates more extreme weather.

In the latest developments, more than 5,000 people were evacuated and rice fields were saturated following a dyke breach in Hunan province late on Friday. Authorities have issued flooding alerts in Shandong and Sichuan for this week, and warned that several major waterways – including the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers – are at risk of overflowing.

Temperatures were above-normal in June and will exceed average levels by even more this month, the National Climate Centre said in a briefing late last week. Different parts of the country are being simultaneously hit by floods, droughts and tropical storms, threatening to spur food inflation if output of wheat, soybeans, rice and corn is affected.

China will see more extreme weather events in the coming years due to the impact of climate change, Yuan Jiashuang, deputy director at the climate centre, said at the briefing. The China Meteorological Administration has begun a new round of zoning of agricultural resources, the first time they’ve done this in 40 years, to help the sector adapt, she said.

The Chinese People’s Armed Police Force evacuated flood-trapped residents in Wanzhou District, in southwest China’s Chongqing on Tuesday, July 4, 2023. Photo: Xinhua via AP.

Eastern, western and central China will see temperatures that are 1 to 2 degrees Celsius above average over July, according to the climate centre, compared with 0.7 degree higher-than-normal across the country last month.