World’s biggest polluter just had its hottest year on record, marked by deadly extreme weather

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Hong Kong CNN —

China saw its hottest year on record in 2023, state media reported this week, as the world’s biggest polluter confronted a series of relentless heat waves and other extreme weather events driven by the human-caused climate crisis.

Daily and monthly temperature records were repeatedly shattered as the year wore on while the country grappled with scorching heat waves, which authorities said had arrived earlier and been more widespread and extreme than in previous years.

China’s exceptional warmth echoed global trends – with scientists confirming that 2023 will officially be the hottest year on record, the result of the combined effects of El Niño and climate change.

The average temperature in China last year stood at 10.7 degrees Celsius – the highest since records began in 1961, according to the National Climate Center, state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

It breaks the previous record of 10.5°C set in 2021.

Across the country, 127 weather stations recorded their highest ever daily temperatures, state-run newspaper China Daily reported.

A person paddles a canoe down a street flooded by recent rain storms in Montpelier, Vermont, U.S., July 11, 2023.

The year’s most extreme weather shows what a warming planet is capable of, and what’s to come

The highest of those was 52.2°C on July 16 in Turpan’s Sanpu town, in the far western Xinjiang region.

The prolonged and persistent heat affected hundreds of millions of people and put huge strain on the country’s power grid. In July, China Energy Investment Corporation, one of the world’s largest