The National Climate Center under the China Meteorological Administration issued its Blue Book on Climate Change on August 4, warning against continuous climate warming.
The report stated that in 2020, the world’s average temperature rose by 1.2 C compared to the average between 1850 and 1900 and that China’s average surface air temperature rose between 1901 and 2020.
China’s average surface air temperature, according to the report, rose at a rate of 0.26 C a decade from 1951 to 2020, much higher than the global average level (0.15C/10 years) in the same period. The past two decades, the report said, marked China’s warmest period since 1900.
The continuous warming has caused glaciers, the sources of many transnational rivers, to melt at a faster speed, the report warned. In 2020, the eastern and western branches of Urumqi Glacier No.1 in the Tianshan Mountains retreated by 7.8 meters and 6.7 meters.
China’s coastal sea level rose an average of 3.4 millimeters a year between 1980 and 2020. In 2020, China’s coastal sea level was 73 millimeters higher than the average figure between 1993 and 2011.
Higher temperatures in the South China Sea caused coral reefs around the Nansha and the Xisha islands to suffer serious bleaching.
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