Sweltering heat enveloped China’s eastern seaboard on Friday, as a high-pressure system settled over the country’s most populous region, baking key agricultural and manufacturing hubs along the Yangtze River and raising fears of droughts and economic losses.
Large swathes of China’s economic heartland are set to roast in temperatures of 37-39C over the coming week. Forecasters are warning that parts of Anhui and Zhejiang provinces, as well as the more central provinces of Hubei and Henan, could top 40C.
The subtropical high causing the heat has arrived unusually early this year.
China’s ‘Sanfu Season’ – an agricultural marker thought to have been in use for more than two millennia – typically begins in mid-July and lasts through late August, sending people sheltering from intense summer heat.
Extreme heat, which meteorologists link to climate change, has emerged as a major challenge for Chinese policymakers. As well as scorching croplands and eroding farm incomes, higher temperatures can affect manufacturing hubs and disrupt operations in key port cities, and strain already overburdened healthcare systems.
The recent heatwave is already taxing China’s power grid, with the nationwide maximum power load surging to a record 1.47 billion kilowatts on Friday, up nearly 150 million from a year earlier, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
In eastern China, the power load reached 422mkW, with air conditioning accounting for about 37 per cent of the demand.
“Heatwaves in China bring drought risks, and this could be a concern in southwestern China this year,” said Chim Lee, a senior analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit specialising in energy and climate change.
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