Heat is on, and we can expect El Niño year
Two women take to the water to escape the hot weather in Texas.
The weather in 2023 will be hotter than 2022 due to the occurrence of the El Niño, according to Zhou Bing, chief climate service officer of the China Meteorological Administration.
In China, this year's heat wave is most likely to occur in the South. There will be no long-term hot weather in the North, which has been sizzling under extreme heat for consecutive days under the influence of high pressure ridges, Zhou said in an interview with China Central Television.
He predicted that there would also be an increase in rainfall in southern China in summer, and a decrease in rainfall in northern China, resulting in floods in the South and drought in the North. Warmer winters would also come this year.
Visitors to the Palace Museum in Beijing shelter from the scorching sunshine under umbrellas.
During the past Dragon Boat Festival holiday, more than 20 regions in China were "roasted" with record high temperatures, especially in northern China including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and Shandong.
The highest temperature in Tianjin's Dagang and Beijing's Tanghekou reached a record high of 41.8 degrees Celsius.
Beijing has, for the first time, recorded three consecutive days with daily highest temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius, since the Beijing Meteorological Observatory was built in 1951.
The Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Inner Mongolia autonomous region and some other north-central regions also witnessed high temperatures between 35 and 39 degrees Celsius. And the heat wave is ongoing.
The capacity of the La Viñuela reservoir in Spain has decreased to 30.98 percent due to continuing heat.
El Niño, a climate pattern that brings warmer sea temperatures to the Pacific Ocean and triggers extreme weather events throughout the world, has arrived and is likely to persist until 2024, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
According to BBC News, weather experts say it will be the10th year in a row that global temperatures will reach at least 1 degree Celsius above average.
The world has already got warmer by around 1.1 degrees Celsius and temperatures in 2023 are predicted to be between 1.08 and 1.32 degrees Celsius higher.
These temperatures are compared to the time before the Industrial Revolution in 1750-1900, when humans began burning large amounts of fossil fuels, releasing warming gases into the atmosphere.
A patient lies on bed as India is hit by a heat wave.
There have been abnormally-high temperatures in many areas of the world this year. Recently, a large number of fish deaths have occurred in Thailand and the United States, CCTV Financial News reported.
Some experts said that this may be related to the abnormal warming of the ocean.
On Thursday, in southern Thailand's Chumphon Province, thousands of dead fish were washed up on the beach. Some experts said that due to the "explosive reproduction" of plankton, the oxygen content in the water dropped and a large number of fish died because of lack of oxygen.
Experts also said that generally, plankton blooms in local waters only once or twice a year, but climate change factors like global warming makes it happen more frequently and on a larger scale.
The same scene also appeared on June 9 on the beaches of the Gulf Coast in Texas, US, where a large number of dead fish were densely packed for several kilometers.
Dead fish on the Gulf Coast in Texas, US.
Japan Times said Japan may also face a hotter-than-usual summer this year caused by the El Nino climate pattern, which some experts warn could develop into a "super El Nino".
Days earlier, at least 96 people are reported to have died from heat-aggravated conditions during a blistering heat wave across two of India's most populous states, the Guardian reported.
The FOX Forecast Center yesterday said nearly 11 million people across four states in the US are under excessive heat alerts as a dangerous heat wave that is more than a week old is expected to expand this week. Forecasts indicate the sizzling weather will continue until at least July 4.
It said the historic heat wave has sent temperatures soaring in Texas into 37.7-43.3 degrees Celsius for days, with dozens of record highs set over the week and into the weekend.
