An environmental expert explains to “Sky News Arabia” how climate disturbances in China have achieved such sharp and accelerated fluctuations, and its relationship to human activity.
The current floods have so far affected 300,000 people, mainly in Jiangxi province, and damaged crops in some areas; This prompted the authorities to carry out evacuations, according to the “China Daily” newspaper.
Chinese television reported that the water level of 21 rivers in the eastern provinces of Jiangxi and Fujian rose above warning signs, affected by heavy rains that began on Friday.
For its part, the Ministry of Water Resources announced that the country has reported more rain than usual, and some small and medium rivers have seen floods exceed alert thresholds.
between flood and drought
• In August 2021, floods claimed the lives of more than 300 people after heavy rains which, in 3 days in Zhengzhou, amounted to the equivalent of a year’s worth of rainfall.
• In June 2022, China experienced floods and landslides in southern and eastern provinces during the heaviest rainfall since 1961.
• In the same year, two months after the floods, China was hit by a drought, which authorities said was the worst since the country began recording weather data since 1961. This was manifested in the drying up of dozens of rivers and the shrinking of Lake Poyang to a quarter of its size; Following a very high temperature.
How did the turmoil happen in China?
Environmental expert Dr. Domit Kamel, head of the Global Environment Party (a Beirut-based environmental awareness association), explains to “Sky News Arabia” China’s role as one of the high-emitting countries of carbon in accelerating the onset of these extreme phenomena within their power, and in rapid succession:
• China ranks second in the world in terms of emissions, with a rate of 18.4%, after the United States, which produces 22.2%.
• High emissions are one of the main reasons for the savagery of climate change, and therefore all countries in the world will foot the bill, including high-emitting countries.
• High burn rates emanating from countries around the world, amounting to 100 million barrels per day, increase the risks of climate change and disruption of air masses.
• Countries that do not produce strong emissions are also affected, because all the emissions that are emitted on the surface of the planet remain in the Earth’s atmosphere.
• What is happening means that climate change has reached a high level of danger and unrest; In China, for example, while some provinces experience flooding, others are sometimes exposed to severe droughts.
• One of the reasons for this is that industrial areas in China form with warm, saturated air masses as they reach cold areas that cause flooding and torrential rains.
China is among the most affected countries in the world
Modeling data provided by XDI, a provider of physical climate risk analysis, shows that there are 20 regions in the world that are most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change.
The data indicates that 16 of these regions are located in China, while the US states of Florida and California rank 10th and 19th respectively.
China’s coastal province of Jiangsu, an industrial region that produces a tenth of GDP, was ranked the most vulnerable in the world, followed by neighboring Shandong province, then Hebei’s main steel production base, and the province of Henan, prone to flooding, in fourth place.
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