China’s climate data showed 2024 was the warmest year for the country since comparative records began more than six decades ago, the second year in a row that the milestone was broken.
According to Weather.com.cn, a service portal run by the China Meteorological Administration, the national average temperature was 10.92 degrees Celsius (51.66 Fahrenheit) last year, 1 degree higher than in 2023.
The service portal said the 10 warmest years since records began in 1961 were of the 21st century.
For China’s financial hub, densely populated Shanghai, 2024 was the hottest since the Qing Dynasty, data from the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau showed on Wednesday.
The city’s average temperature was 18.8 degrees Celsius, the warmest since Shanghai’s meteorological records began in 1873.
Last year’s hot weather, accompanied by storms and heavy rains, led to a spike in electricity consumption in the world’s second-largest economy.
The intense heat also affected agriculture in areas including the rice-growing south.
To protect its food supply in the face of rising temperatures, China has begun research into heat-adapting key crops.
In the absence of alternatives, crop production is expected to decline.
Scientists at a research facility in Beijing found potatoes, of which China is the world’s top producer, weighed 50 percent more than normal varieties if grown in a sat chamber at 3°C above normal. is also less.
Under current climate policies, the world faces up to 3.1 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100, according to a UN report released in October.