China logs hottest August since records began

Southern China last month sweltered under what experts said may have been one of the worst heatwaves in global history, with parts of Sichuan province and the megacity of Chongqing clocking a string of days well over 40 degrees Celsius.

The average temperature nationwide was 22.4 degrees Celsius in August, exceeding the norm by 1.2 degrees Celsius, state broadcaster CCTV reported, citing the country's weather service.

About 267 weather stations across the country matched or broke temperature records last month, the report said.

It was also China's third-driest August on record, with average rainfall 23.1 per cent lower than average.

"The average number of high-temperature days was abnormally high, and regional high-temperature processes are continuing to impact our country," CCTV reported the weather service as saying.

Scientists say extreme weather like heatwaves, droughts and flash floods is becoming more frequent and intense due to human-induced climate change.

Last month, temperatures as high as 45 degrees Celsius prompted multiple Chinese provinces to impose power cuts as cities battled to cope with a surge in electricity demand partly driven by people cranking up the air conditioning.

Images from Chongqing showed a tributary of the mighty Yangtze river had almost run dry, a scene echoed further east where the waters of China's largest freshwater lake also receded extensively.

"SEVERE THREAT"

Chongqing and the eastern megacity of Shanghai switched off outdoor decorative lighting to mitigate the power crunch, while authorities in Sichuan imposed industrial power cuts as water levels dwindled at major hydroelectric plants.

As local authorities warned that the drought posed a "severe threat" to this year's harvest, the central government approved billions of yuan in subsidies to support rice farmers.

"This is a warning for us, reminding us to have a deeper understanding of climate change and improve our ability to adapt to it in all respects," said Zhang Daquan, a senior official at China's National Climate Centre, in comments carried Monday by the state-run People's Daily newspaper.

"It is also necessary to raise awareness across all of society to adapt to climate change ... and strive to minimise social and economic impacts and losses," Zhang said.

Yangtze river shrinks as heatwave, drought threaten crops

Regions that rely on the Yangtze, China's longest river, are having to deploy pumps and cloud-seeding rockets as a long drought depletes water levels and threatens crops, and a heatwave is set to last another two weeks.

The Yangtze's middle and lower reaches have faced temperatures in excess of 40 degrees Celsius over the past month, with experts blaming climate change-induced variations in the western Pacific subtropical high, a major determinant of summer weather throughout east Asia.

With the autumn harvest under threat, the agriculture ministry has deployed 25 teams to key regions to take action to protect crops, the Shanghai government's Guangming Daily newspaper reported.

The heatwave is likely to last for another two weeks, making it the longest sustained period of extreme temperatures since records began in 1961, experts with China's National Climate Center told the official Science and Technology Daily on Monday (Aug 15).

Rainfall in the Yangtze river drainage area fell about 30 per cent in July and is 60 per cent lower than normal in August, with the river's tributaries "significantly lower" than historical levels, according to the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission.

The Poyang lake in central China's Jiangxi province, which plays a major role in regulating Yangtze water flows in the summer, has shrunk to levels normally seen during the winter dry season after a 50 per cent decline in rain in July.

Villages relying on water from the lake have been forced to deploy pumps to irrigate rice fields, media reported.

In the sprawling southwestern municipality of Chongqing, facing its second hottest summer since records began in 1961, 900 missiles have been made available to try to "seed" clouds and induce rain, media reported.

Other regions have launched their own weather modification operations.

China normally releases water from the Three Gorges reservoir to relieve drought on the Yangtze but downstream outflows are half the level of a year earlier, official data showed.