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China’s 2022 heatwave
ChinaScience

China heatwave and drought to continue, with power supply hit, shipping halted and crops at risk

  • About 4.5 million sq km, or half of China’s total area, is in the grip of extreme high temperatures
  • Farmers are worried about the autumn harvest amid a nationwide drought alert, as a power crunch shuts factories and sparks supply chain worries

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Low water levels in the Yangtze River amid a heatwave warning in Wuhan, Hubei province. Photo: Reuters
Echo Xie
About half of China’s landmass is reeling under the most severe drought and longest sustained period of extreme high temperatures in six decades, with no respite seen for at least a week.
Water levels in the nation’s longest river, the Yangtze, are at a record low, halting shipping over vast sections of the key waterway, while those at its biggest freshwater lake Poyang are down by 75 per cent, the lowest since records began in 1951.

The national weather bureau issued yet another heatwave red alert – the highest in a three-tier system – for southern China on Saturday, the ninth in a row and the 31st consecutive day of high-temperature warnings.

Heatwaves in central and eastern China, some of the most densely populated parts of the country, are also beating records, with sustained temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for a month.

A nationwide drought alert was issued on Friday, the first such notice in nine years.

There has been no rainfall for three weeks in farmer Cheng’s hometown of Xinghua, in the eastern province of Jiangsu. The afternoon temperature of 40 degrees Celsius is high enough to make soybean leaves wilt.

“It looks like the plants are going to die at noon. They recover a bit at night when it’s cooler, but the leaves are wilted again the next morning,” said Cheng, 70, who now fears a 30 per cent cut in his yield this year.

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