Extreme Weather
No more time can be wasted in the fight against global warming. The good news is that we have many technological means to do containment well. We just have to start acting.
Petteri Taalas, secretarygeneral of the World Meteorological Organization
On July 20, 2021, a severe rainstorm attacked parts of Henan Province. Rainfall in Zhengzhou reached 201.9 mm per hour, which exceeded any previous hourly rainfall record on the Chinese mainland. The flood caused by the rainstorm affected 13.7 million people in the province and caused direct economic losses of 88.5 billion yuan (about US$14 billion).
However, this was only a microcosm of the increasingly frequent occurrence of extreme weather events around the world in 2021. The “storm of the century” in Western Europe caused hundreds of casualties, and the extreme high temperatures in western North America triggered devastating wildfires. The world is experiencing an unprecedented rise of extreme weather events.
The report “Climate Change 2021: Natural Science Basis” issued by the United Nations pointed out that over the next few decades, global climate change will intensify, and extreme high temperature and precipitation events will become more frequent. More and more climate experts have formed a consensus: Although not every extreme weather and climate event can be attributed to climate change, it should be a wake-up call for mankind.