China Sets Heat Record as John Kerry Arrives to Discuss Climate

SINGAPORE—Temperatures in a Chinese village hit a searing 126 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest ever recorded in the country, on the same day that U.S. climate envoy John Kerry arrived in Beijing to try to revive stalled cooperation on climate change between the world’s two largest emitters of carbon dioxide.

The record was set on Sunday in Sanbao, a remote township outside the city of Turpan in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, according to state media. Four other townships in the Turpan Depression, a 19,000 square mile basin of sand dunes and dried up lake beds, recorded temperatures of more than 122 degrees. 

Heat waves have been ravaging the globe in recent days. More than 100 million Americans are suffering from a streak of 110-degree days blanketing the South and Southwest, while extreme heat is sweeping across Italy, Spain and Greece. Last week was the Earth’s hottest week on record, and followed the hottest June on record. 

China is particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures as climate change accelerates, Chinese officials have warned. Annual temperatures in China rose by an average of 0.16 degrees Celsius every decade since the start of last century, faster than the global average, according to this year’s Blue Book on Climate Change of China published by China’s Meteorological Association this month. 

Swaths of China have baked under scorching heat this summer and the current wave is expected to last until the end of the month. Many cities have turned air-raid shelters, which can be nearly 20 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than outside, into refuges for residents trying to escape the heat, state media said. 

Local governments instructed people in affected areas to avoid outdoor activities and reduce their work hours if they had to work outside in the heat. Chinese media haven’t reported any human deaths from this current heat wave but said more than 4,000 chickens and 462 pigs perished in the heat last week after power failures. 

The Paris Agreement set a goal of limiting global warming since the preindustrial era to well under 2 degrees Celsius and preferably to 1.5 degrees. Climate experts warn that it is increasingly likely global temperatures will breach the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold, and that mitigating the worst effects of climate change will require the U.S. and China to work together. 

Climate talks between the U.S. and China ground to a halt after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan last summer but were revived three months later on the sidelines of the annual climate gathering in Egypt. 

Kerry is expected to spend three days in Beijing in an effort to reboot climate cooperation between Beijing and Washington on several pressing issues, including the reduction of coal use and emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that escapes during gas and oil production. The two sides are also expected to discuss technical issues to prepare the ground before the next climate summit, in Dubai at the end of the year. 

Kerry spent four hours on Monday meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua in the Beijing Hotel near the Forbidden City, according to state broadcaster China Central Television.  

China has been combating extreme weather all year. In January, a city in northeastern China saw temperatures plummet as low as minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit. Heavy rains devastated wheat fields in central China in May and Beijing, the capital, has been facing one of its hottest summers on record, with temperatures soaring past 104 degrees for 26 consecutive days.

Some experts say this year’s heat waves might stem in part from El Niño, a hard-to-predict climate pattern caused by warming of ocean surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, which could lead to a surge in global temperatures and disruptive weather and climate patterns.

Last year, scorching heat and record-low rainfall in August led to power shortages in China, which damaged crop yields, forced offices to shut down and led to the temporary suspension of plant operations for Toyota, Volkswagen and some suppliers for Apple supplier

Write to Sha Hua at [email protected]