Shanghai records hottest May day in 100 years

May 29, 2023

Shanghai recorded the hottest May day in more than a century on Monday, the east China city’s meteorological department said.

At 1:09 p.m. (0509 GMT), the temperature measured at Xujiahui subway station reached 36.1°C, “breaking a record dating back more than a century for the highest temperature for a month of May”, announced the official account of the meteorological service, on the Chinese social network Weibo.

The mercury there climbed to 36.7°C in the afternoon, beating by one degree the record temperature of 35.7°C recorded four times, in 1876, 1903, 1915 and 2018, according to the meteorological service of the largest city in China.

Climate change has made heat waves at least 30 times more likely in this country, according to a study by 22 international climatologists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative published in mid-May.

In Shanghai, some applications displayed a “felt” temperature of more than 40°C.

“I went out at noon to pick up a delivery and had a headache on the way home,” a local resident complained on Chinese messaging site Weibo.

“I almost had a heatstroke, it’s really hot enough to explode,” laments another, named Wu, who assures AFP: “I have the feeling that the summers are getting hotter and hotter every year”. “I turn on the air conditioning earlier than before,” he adds.

Other Asian countries have already experienced deadly heat waves this year.

In mid-April, in parts of India, the mercury rose to 44°C, killing at least 11 people near Mumbai in a single day. Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, experienced its hottest day in six decades.

A record 45.4°C was reached in the western Thai province of Tak, and it reached 42.9°C in Sainyabuli province in Laos, an all-time high for the country, according to the WWA.

In mid-May, the UN warned that the period 2023-2027 will almost certainly be the hottest ever recorded on Earth, under the combined effect of greenhouse gases and the El Nino weather phenomenon.

Global temperatures are expected to soon exceed the most ambitious target of the Paris climate agreements, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned.

The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to keep global average temperature rise to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels from 1850 to 1900 and if possible to 1.5°C above those same levels. levels.

The WMO estimates a 66% chance that the global mean annual surface temperature will exceed pre-industrial levels by 1.5°C for at least one of the next five years.