BEIJING: Torrential rains in China have killed at least 30 people and left dozens more missing, state media said on Thursday, as the country grinds through another summer of extreme weather.
Confirmation of the deaths came the same day that weather authorities said July was China’s hottest month since records began six decades ago.
China is the world’s biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that scientists say are driving climate change and making extreme weather more frequent and intense.
Heatwaves this summer have scorched parts of northern China, while heavy rain has triggered floods and landslides in central and southern areas.
This week’s downpours were triggered by Typhoon Gaemi, which moved on from the Philippines and Taiwan to make landfall in eastern China a week ago, with hilly, landlocked Hunan province hit particularly hard.
More than 11,000 people were evacuated from the city of Zixing after some areas endured record rainfall of 645 millimeters (25 inches) in just 24 hours, state news agency Xinhua said on Tuesday.
Many roads connecting townships in the Zixing area were temporarily cut off, which also affected the power supply and communications infrastructure.
State broadcaster CCTV said on Thursday the disruption was mostly over.
“Initial findings show that there have been 30 deaths and 35 are missing,” the report said, adding that search and rescue efforts were still ongoing.
Xinhua said on Tuesday four people had been killed and three people were missing in Zixing.
Three people were killed in Hunan’s Yongxing county, Xinhua also said Tuesday, while a landslide on Sunday killed 15 people elsewhere in the province.
Last month was “the hottest July since complete observations began in 1961, and the hottest single month in the history of observation,” the national weather office said Thursday.
It said the average July air temperature in China was 23.21 degrees Celsius (73.78 degrees Fahrenheit), exceeding the previous record of 23.17C (73.71F) in 2017.
The mean temperature in every province was also “higher than the average for previous years,” with the southwestern provinces of Guizhou and Yunnan logging their highest averages, the weather office said.
It forecast that the mercury would continue to climb in eastern regions this week, including Shanghai, where a red alert for extreme heat was in place on Thursday.
“Next week will be more of the same. It’s like being on an iron plate,” wrote one user of the Weibo social media platform in response to the megacity’s heat warning.
Another quipped: “It’s so hot. Did Shanghai do something to anger the gods?“
The nearby city of Hangzhou may hit 43C (109F) on Saturday, which would break its all-time record, the weather office said.
Middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River would likely see daily temperatures fall no lower than 30C (86F), it said.
The news came little more than a week after Earth experienced its warmest day in recorded history.
Preliminary data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service showed the daily global average temperature was 17.15C (62.9F) on July 22.
That was 0.06C hotter than the day before, which itself broke the all-time high temperature set a year earlier by a small margin.
China has pledged to bring emissions of carbon dioxide to a peak by 2030, and to net zero by 2060, but has resisted calls to be bolder.
It long depended on highly polluting coal power to fuel its massive economy but has emerged as a renewable energy leader in recent years.
Research showed last month that China is building almost twice as much wind and solar energy capacity than every other country combined.
30 dead, dozens missing after torrential rain in central China
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30 dead, dozens missing after torrential rain in central China
- Confirmation of the deaths came the same day that weather authorities said July was China’s hottest month since records began six decades ago
- Heatwaves this summer have scorched parts of northern China, while heavy rain has triggered floods and landslides in central and southern areas
Russia says foreign forces in Ukraine would be ‘legitimate targets’
- Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries
MOSCOW: Russia would regard the deployment of any foreign military forces or infrastructure in Ukraine as foreign intervention and treat those forces as legitimate targets, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday, citing Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The ministry’s comment, one of many it said were in response to questions put to Lavrov, also praised US President Donald Trump’s efforts at working for a resolution of the war and said he understood the fundamental reasons behind the conflict.
“The deployment of military units, facilities, warehouses, and other infrastructure of Western countries in Ukraine is unacceptable to us and will be regarded as foreign intervention posing a direct threat to Russia’s security,” the ministry said on its website.
It said Western countries — which have discussed a possible deployment to Ukraine to help secure any peace deal — had to understand “that all foreign military contingents, including German ones, if deployed in Ukraine, will become legitimate targets for the Russian Armed Forces.”
The United States has spearheaded efforts to hold talks aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine and a second three-sided meeting with Russian and Ukrainian representatives is to take place this week in the United Arab Emirates.
The issue of ceding internationally recognized Ukrainian territory to Russia remains a major stumbling block. Kyiv rejects Russian calls for it to give up all of its Donbas region, including territory Moscow’s forces have not captured.
Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries.
The ministry said Moscow valued the “purposeful efforts” of the Trump administration in working toward a resolution and understanding Russia’s long-running concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion and its overtures to Ukraine.
It described Trump as “one of the few Western politicians who not only immediately refused to advance meaningless and destructive preconditions for starting a substantive dialogue with Moscow on the Ukrainian crisis, but also publicly spoke about its root causes.”
