Reflections on a time of change

Extreme weather events leave us all exposed

Even as a climate and weather reporter, I was unprepared for last year's extreme weather events, the frequency of which surprised everyone.

I was busier than ever before, talking with climatologists, meteorologists, forestry experts and nature reserve officials to discover the deeper reasons and solutions.

In March, the biggest sandstorm in a decade swept northern China, lasting about a month. Starting in July, heavy rain, typhoons and floods arrived nationwide, causing financial losses, especially in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province. In November, heavy snow arrived in Beijing 27 days earlier than the average date between 1991 and last year, according to data from weather.com.cn.

Chinese people are not used to opening their conversations with weather-related topics. However, in such situations, we couldn't help complaining to each other about the changeable and disastrous weather.

Given my job, whoever happened to come my way felt obliged to ask me when the rain would stop, why there was so much rain and would the coming winter be a warm one?

I explained about subtropical highs and the Siberian cold air mass, but they seemed unsatisfied with my answers. Their difficulty in deciphering meteorological terminology reflected their inability to do anything to alleviate the situation. Climatologists have said they can't directly attribute severe weather events to climate change, but extreme events may occur more frequently given the background of global warming.

Data from the 2019 China Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, released in July, said global concentrations of carbon dioxide had reached the highest level since China began recording the data in the 1990s.

There have been signs of climate change, not just in extreme examples but also in some slow, latent ways.

When I conducted interviews in May along Qinghai Lake in the northwestern province of Qinghai, a local administrator told me that the lake's depth had increased by more than 3 meters since the 2000s.

Grassland along the lake had been submerged by the water and become part of the lake's body. It is good for the lake and animals, but a scientist told me that it will not last long.

Melting glaciers, resulting from global warming, had raised the lake's level, which is good for the aquatic environment. However, with no new glaciers forming and existing ones continuing to melt, glacier runoff globally is projected to peak before 2050 and then decline, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change. By then, the water level in the lake will be receding.

In the disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow, a climatologist warns government officials about global warming, but it is too late for people to avoid a catastrophic freezing storm prompted by the changes.

I hope people in the real world will note this and take action to restrain climate change before it is too late.