China and several other countries in Asia and the Pacific were reeling from monsoon flooding and crippling temperatures on Wednesday, the latest disruptions in what forecasters say could be a long summer and fall of extreme weather around the world.
Authorities in China said on Wednesday that 15 people have died and four others are missing due to flooding in the sprawling southwestern city of Chongqing, according to state-run news media.
Another sign of how bad China’s flooding was, news footage showed rescuers in central Henan province freeing two people from the roof of a car stuck in a rushing river. A fire service sent them life jackets with a drone and lifted them to safety with a crane.
More bad weather may be on the way, in China and beyond. The World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday that El Niño, a cyclical climate pattern that warms ocean surface temperatures in parts of the Pacific, has formed for the first time in seven years. The agency said it was likely to combine with human-induced warming to cause more heat waves and disruptive weather worldwide in the second half of this year.
Summer typically brings tremendous heat to the Asia-Pacific region, plus rain showers associated with the annual monsoon. But this season’s weather has already been particularly intense.
Notably, about 20 cities in China recorded flooding this week, with many suffering days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. For weeks before the latest extreme weather set in, unusually heavy flooding and an atypical early heat wave had strained harvests and made life difficult.
Authorities in China said on Wednesday that 11 of the country’s 31 provincial governments are bracing for more heavy rains in the next three days. According to forecasts and local news reports, more than 20,000 people have already been displaced as a result of the flooding that began this weekend.
In the southwestern Chinese municipality of Chongqing, images released this week showed part of a multi-story building fell into an adjacent river under the force of fast-moving currents.
China was not the only country to report damage from severe flooding. Heavy rain in southwestern Japan over the weekend flooded homes and killed at least one person. A number of prefectures there were still under storm surge warnings or advisories as of Wednesday.
And in Cambodia, officials in Phnom Penh, the capital, said the heavy rainfall there on Monday — about six inches — was the most the city had received in three years.
Dan Sophan, 43, said on Wednesday that the volleyball courts he owns in Phnom Penh are still nearly two feet under water.
“The sewer pipes are small,” he said.
At the same time, much of the region was baking in sweltering temperatures.
Temperatures in Henan and other Chinese regions, including around Beijing, the capital, were expected to reach 104 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday. Beijing was almost there from 3:30 p.m. local time.
Some parts of Taiwan, the island south of mainland China, expected temperatures of 106 degrees on Thursday and Friday, according to the Central Weather Bureau.
While attributing a single heat wave to climate change requires analysis, scientists have no doubt that heat waves around the world are getting hotter, more frequent and longer-lasting.
In the United States, the 2018 National Climate Assessment noted that the number of hot days was increasing and that the frequency of heat waves in the country had increased to six per year in the 2010s, from an average of two per year in the 1960s.
The World Meteorological Agency said on Tuesday that while the El Niño phenomenon occurs on average every two to seven years, “it is occurring in the context of a climate altered by human activities”. The agency also noted that the latest El Niño year, 2016, remains the warmest on record due to a “double whammy” from El Niño and human-induced warming.
Sun Narin reporting contributed.
