Joint efforts on climate needed

The extreme weather around the world recently, from the blizzards in the United States to the sweltering heat wave in Australia, further verify the previous predictions that hurricanes, floods, droughts and other natural disasters will become increasingly frequent worldwide.

Reports published by the World Meteorological Organization and NASA both show that, based on modern meteorological records, last year was among the top three years with the highest recorded temperature after world average temperature hit a new high for three consecutive years from 2014 to 2016.

More and more studies prove that global warming is the result of greenhouse gas emissions and it is altering the frequency, intensity and duration of extreme weather. For example, the latest freeze in North America was mainly because of the narrowed temperature gap between the Arctic Pole and the mid-latitude belt as a result of rising arctic temperatures, which has weakened the arctic region's ability to control the polar vortex and caused it to more conveniently flow to lower-latitude regions.