China's Unprecedented Heatwave

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, our climate story of the week. You think it's been hot here? The heatwave in southern China is that country's worst on record, but get this. It may also be the worst heatwave anywhere in the world in modern history. Cities in Sichuan Province, home to 80 million people. This is Southwest China, kind of near India and what we call Southeast Asia, Vietnam and Thailand, etcetera.

One article I saw called it a 70-day heatwave. There have been other superlatives for how unusual and possibly unique this summer has been there. One city in the region, Gao, hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit last week. The heat has been devastating in general and it's been accompanied by drought and power shortages. The power shortages have really had a lot of impact on people's lives. As a result, factories have had to shut down, livestock have died on farms, and cities have been dimmed.

It may amount to yet another wrinkle in the global supply chain as well. We will talk more about this unprecedented heatwave and its implications in relationship to climate change now with Bob Henson, meteorologist, journalist, and regular contributor to Yale Climate Connections. Also with us is Eunice Yoon, Beijing bureau chief and senior correspondent at CNBC and NBC News. Bob, welcome to WNYC. Eunice, welcome back. Great to have you both with us.

Eunice Yoon: Thanks, Brian.

Bob Henson: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Eunice Yoon, put this heatwave in context. How hot has it been and where is it hottest?

Eunice Yoon: It is very hot along the longest river in China, which is the Yangtze. You had mentioned temperatures hitting 110 degrees. In some places, they've actually hit 113 degrees. The day count at this point is 78 days of the heatwave. This is the most severe since some of the weather authorities have been keeping records in 1961. The weather authorities have been reporting red alerts for cities since June 13th.

By red alert, that means that red is the highest in a three-tier system and means that your temperatures are hitting over 40 degrees Celsius or about 104 degrees Fahrenheit in a 48-hour period and look as though it's going to continue that way. This is also very wide, has a very wide scope because it's estimated, about 900 million people have been suffering under the heat warnings.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Eunice Yoon: It's just affecting, as you had mentioned, so many different aspects of life here in China.

Brian Lehrer: Bob Henson, anything you would like to add about how unprecedented this extreme heat is? Eunice just mentioned the date, June 13th, as when these red alerts started being issued. I guess that would back up the article I read that said a 70-day heatwave.

Bob Henson: That's right. In China, the standard definition for heatwave is at least three days where the high temperature is 95 degrees Fahrenheit or 35 Celsius. By that measure, there has been a heatwave in at least some part of China since mid-June. I think the poster child, if you will, for how bad this has been would be the city of Chongqing, which is about 10 million in the main part of the urban area. Technically, it's the largest city on Earth in terms of metro, but that's over nearly the size of Austria. The core urban part of the city is on the order of 10 million. [chuckles] Just imagine this, the low temperature has been at least 86 degrees for three solid weeks.

Brian Lehrer: Wow, that's a low temperature.

Bob Henson: Yes, that even outdoes Phoenix. Phoenix has never been that warm day and night for that longer period. Most of those days, the high temperature was above 107. Mind you, they have a hot, humid climate in the entire Yangtze valley. There are cities known as the "Four Furnaces" for its legendarily hot, humid climate. Even by those standards, temperatures have been 10 degrees above normal every night and 15 Fahrenheit above normal every day.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, this is our climate story of the week. We have time now for a few calls or we have time in this conversation for a few calls about China's extreme heat and drought and their broader implications in China and beyond. Anybody there right now or anybody been there since the middle of June and wants to report on this from personal experience or just anyone with a question about it for our guests Eunice Yoon from NBC News over there and meteorologist Bob Henson, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Bob, I imagine, it isn't straightforward to determine, but how much of China's heat and drought can be directly attributed to climate change?

Bob Henson: Well, this is one of those classic situations where it'll take what we call "attribution study" to determine exactly how much. However, I can tell you that this heatwave almost certainly would not have happened without climate change. There was an exhaustive study done on the 2013 heatwave, which was the worst up to this point. The researchers found that that heatwave would have been virtually impossible without the hand of climate change.

I just don't think this would have happened. To back up the statement you read a little while ago, this may be the worst heatwave in global history. When you average out how many people were affected, as Eunice said, close to a billion people, and the duration and the intensity. Chongqing has had as many tropical nights this year as they did for a whole 65-year period up to 2015.

You basically packed 60 years of heat into one summer. We're not just talking a few record highs, but week upon week of record highs. It's truly mind-boggling as someone who's followed high temperatures all over the globe. My friend, Maximiliano Herrera, who is probably the world's preeminent lay expert on extreme temperatures, agrees that this is probably the worst heatwave by all those measures if you pull them together.

Brian Lehrer: Worst heatwave in human history happening right now in China by those measures. Are there other meteorological or more weather as opposed to climate-related conditions that have also been contributing to it? I know in this country when we get certain kinds of extreme weather patterns, people say, "Ah, but there's the El Niño, which is going on in the ocean," and things like that. Anything like that contributing that you're aware of?

Bob Henson: Well, as a matter of fact, we have quite a strong La Niña pattern going on. We've had La Niña in place since 2020. This is quite a prolonged event. It's been recurring and subsiding and recurring. That may be involved. There's not an ironclad relationship though between El Niño and La Niña and drought and even China. What really stands out to me is the drought-heat connection there because there's also been quite an intense drought.

We know that when it's hot, a drought impact is worse because the heat dries out the landscape even more thoroughly. This is something that is really kicking in with climate change. For example, in the western US, California used to have hot droughts and cool droughts. In the last several decades, just about every drought now is a hot one. The heat actually allows the landscape to get even hotter, or the drought does rather because a dry landscape allows more of that incoming sunshine to go into heating the air rather than evaporating moisture.

Brian Lehrer: Eunice, you mentioned the Yangtze River before as being in Sichuan Province, the center of the heatwave. I've read that rivers are so low in some places that ships can't pass through them. Is that the case with the Yangtze at all? If so, how is this inability of ships to get through affecting the economy or otherwise people's lives?

Eunice Yoon: Well, it's absolutely happening. This state TV reported that there were 66 riverbeds around Chongqing that had been completely dried up. It's very difficult to transport cargo in the Yangtze River right now, which is, of course, a really important waterway for China. In fact, some companies around there, many factories that have been using the Yangtze River have had to hire hundreds of truckers to try to get their cargo to the right places.

This is all coming as COVID restrictions are very, very tight. There's been a trucker shortage for a lot of companies because truckers don't really want to continue to deal with these restrictions, especially cross-borders. It's all very difficult for the economy right now. I thought it was interesting when Bob had mentioned Chongqing as being one of the places that is most effective, which it definitely is.

What's interesting here is that a lot of people feel that Chongqing and another huge city, Chengdu, that they're a little bit better off because some of the smaller cities are struggling not only with power outages but also with limited water supply. What we're seeing in the Yangtze and all these small cities or big cities that people are dealing with rolling brownouts, where the authorities are rotating power restrictions for different districts or cutting power for certain hours every day.

People have been complaining that they've been told their power cuts will be two hours, and then it stretches for as long as eight hours. In some cities, office buildings are required to set the air conditioning at a maximum of 26 degrees Celsius. That's about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. When the government says you have to set your air conditioning at a certain level, you do it. There're also been restrictions on elevators, so you can use it to go up in some places or to certain floors.

Then there have been other cities where everyone just has to take the stairs. People have also been asked to work from home because of the high temperatures. It's really unprecedented where people are sleeping under bridges and tunnels. They're going to air raid shelters just to avoid the heat. We've been talking to people who've said that their tap water is constantly warm. It's hard to go anywhere because you mentioned the economy, shops, malls shut, have limited lighting.

Then it's not only in the Yangtze in that southwestern area. It's also all along the river, including in Shanghai, which is on the way, way eastern end. Even in Shanghai, if any of your listeners or if you've ever been to Shanghai, this iconic shot along the water with glittering buildings and lots of decorative lights for a couple of days, those decorative lights weren't allowed. There was a lot of power restrictions there just because Shanghai, like many other cities, actually sources their electricity or at least part of their electricity from Sichuan, the southwestern part.

Brian Lehrer: That is just so extreme. All of that sounds so extreme. Has there been a death toll from the heatwave?

Eunice Yoon: I actually haven't seen any major death toll, especially because a lot of the state media has been focused more on the heroic stories of the firefighters. We've been seeing a lot of wildfires over there and there's been talk about how 1,500 people had to be evacuated. Thousands of firefighters are on their way there, but I actually haven't heard so much of death specifically from the heatwave and any meaningful numbers.

Brian Lehrer: With Eunice Yoon, Beijing bureau chief for CNBC and NBC News, and meteorologist Bob Henson, who's a regular contributor to Yale Climate Connections, as we talk about perhaps the worst heatwave anywhere in human history in China right now. Thomas in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Thomas.

Thomas: Hi, my heart really goes out to the people that are suffering there. I really don't want to make this sound like I'm blaming the victim, but my understanding is that China is responsible for about 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. We certainly have not got our act together in the United States, but is there any possibility that this might really help to prod the Chinese government to do more to control greenhouse gas emissions? Again, as I said, we haven't got our act together here in the US. That's for sure, but just wondering about that.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Bob Henson, do you have any perspective on that?

Bob Henson: Sure, yes. The relationship between China and the United States in greenhouse emissions over the last several decades is fascinating. Basically, if you put the US and China together, that's been between 40% and 50% of global emissions for quite a while now. What's happened is the bulk of the manufacturing that's gone from the United States to China has been a large part of the driver of this.

In other words, China is making more and more products for the US, so the greenhouse emissions associated with those products are now registered as being from China, which they are. If it's to serve the US really, I think you have to look at China and the US together in terms of global emissions. Now, part of the issue here is also that China is a massively large country. If you look per capita at emissions, the US is still well ahead of China for emissions per person. Nevertheless, China is the largest emitter as a unit, as a nation.

I know that China has a lot going on in terms of solar and wind energy. They're doing a lot on renewables, but simply the scale of the problem there is so large. I know they are aiming to peak their emissions by 2030 and bring them down to net zero, I believe, by 2060. That's not quite the same pace as a lot of other countries in the world. For quite a while, many countries, including China, have said, "Well, we haven't had a chance to develop in the same way as the historically largest emitters," which the US is top of the heap on.

There's a lot of factors in there. I'm not sure that this by itself is going to be a huge motivator in part because there are so many crosscurrents in global energy right now between the pandemic and the Ukrainian invasion. In response to that, I think a lot of countries are struggling just to keep their power systems going. It's going to be a rough ride, I think, for a year or two to see how emissions fall out from all this activity.

Brian Lehrer: Looks like we're getting a call from China. Nick in Tianjin, China. Do I have that right, Nick? You're on WNYC. Hello from New York.

Nick: Yes, how are you doing? Nice to speak with you, Brian. I'm a New Yorker and it's nice to have an opportunity to connect from China.

Brian Lehrer: That is so cool or is it so hot? You tell me.

Nick: It's surprising. It's not so hot right now. Actually, we're having a cold spell at the moment. It's in the 50s.

Brian Lehrer: Where in China is that?

Nick: I'm in the north. I'm outside of Beijing. I'm in the city called Tianjin, which is almost some west suburb. It's like Philly in comparison to New York.

Brian Lehrer: What else would you like to add on this?

Nick: Well, it was pretty intense this summer. It was really hot. Between the Celsius here, it was in the above 40s. I was in the south. Sometimes it was blisteringly hot. Not a lot of rain. To be honest, COVID is much more severe than any heatwave at the moment.

Brian Lehrer: Do you mean the COVID restrictions?

Nick: Yes, it's still very real here. Slowly, China is trying to come around to, at least seemingly, relaxing its restrictions. In fact, really, nothing is changing. Actually, no one talks about the heatwave here. It's irrelevant. It's not really getting a lot of news other than the fact that, occasionally, you'll hear about droughts and certain cities are struggling for water. In general, COVID is much more real and the restrictions in the pandemic is front and center.

Brian Lehrer: Really interesting, Nick. Thank you so much for checking in from there. I really appreciate it. Well, Eunice Yoon, for you in Beijing as NBC News Beijing bureau chief, what are you thinking as you're listening to Nick's call from the north?

Eunice Yoon: Well, he's absolutely right. COVID is very much front and center. In fact, Tianjin, which is very close to Beijing, is right in the middle of mass testing right now. They had an outbreak. It's mini-outbreak, but they're having to deal with more mass testing, which is something that we commonly see throughout the country. He mentioned that it's gotten colder here. It's also colder in Beijing. It's in 70s, but this is after a lot of heat.

It's mainly in the Southwest that we're watching now that there are a lot of people who are feeling somewhat relieved that the temperatures are coming down, but their concern is still about the drought and the impact that the drought could have because it's probably going to continue until September or longer, depending on what happens next with the harvest. That's a huge concern because the autumn harvest is so important to China. It's 75% of the annual grain production, so there are a lot of questions about that.

Then the other concern is that the Southwest is now on high alert for flash flooding because they are forecast to have rain for the next several days. They have had a couple of days of rain. They're supposed to have another 10 days or so because the soil is so cracked and it's just so hardened that it doesn't absorb the water fast enough. People are worried about landslides next. This isn't a part of the country that has been through so much.

They've been through the heatwave and the power cuts and the COVID restrictions in the middle of all this. They have the wildfires and people were talking about how they would have to deal with a wildfire, and then they had a COVID outbreak that they're still dealing with right now. Then at 4:30 in the morning, they have to go and get a COVID test. It's like a-hundred-something degrees over there. They've just been through so much right now. Now, they're going to have to deal with the potential for landslides and flash floods.

Brian Lehrer: Something like this is going on in Pakistan too, right? I wonder if either of you are keeping your eyes on that, either Eunice Yoon as Beijing bureau chief for NBC News or for you as a meteorologist, Bob, concerned with global climate issues, intense heat like 50 degrees Celsius and now, I think, intense flooding.

Bob Henson: Yes, that's right. The pre-monsoon heat was extreme in Pakistan as it tends to be. It was on the extreme end of what they tend to get in the late spring and then the monsoon kicks in. Now, this is an example of where the Indian monsoon, South Asian monsoon, is a standard feature of climate, right? Every so often, it will veer toward the west and affect Pakistan more dramatically than usual.

The landscape in Pakistan is so flood-prone that whenever this happens, there is risk of flooding. Now, the floods in 2010 in Pakistan were the worst on record by far. What's going on now is comparable to that, some measures are not quite as bad and some measures are worse. Of course, it's still playing out as well, so we'll have to see how it ends. More than 1,000 people killed and extremely dramatic, heart-rending images of buildings collapsing and people being rescued. It is a tragedy, a massive tragedy.

It's not a stretch to connect these meteorologically in that when you have a tense, high-pressure cell, stagnant causing drought and heat in one location, it can sometimes shut the rainmaking patterns to another location. I have no doubt that when we put all the pieces together, the heatwave in China and the upper-atmospheric conditions that caused that will also be related to what's forcing the heavy rains in Pakistan. I should also add that the last severe flooding in Pakistan in 2010 was during the last intense La Niña event. In that location, there is a pretty strong connection to La Niña.

Brian Lehrer: Right, interesting. I said 50 degrees Celsius. That's 122 Fahrenheit for those who don't know the conversion table on that. Really, Eunice, we've done segments now on our climate story of the week about China today, brought up Pakistan today. We did a separate on India a few weeks ago. It seems like in such large swathes of Asia, there's been nothing like has ever been seen before.

Eunice Yoon: Yes, I would agree with that. I was hoping to be able to add a little bit more to something that Bob had talked to you about when you were talking about Chinese commitment for green energy because I totally agree with him. I think that China has reasons to want to pursue climate initiatives. The authorities, even for this heatwave, blamed it in part on climate change. They do see that China is impacted by it, but there are other reasons why.

I think Beijing is going to continue to pursue it and that's one. They want to dominate the technologies like EVs. They've been really working hard to try to wean Beijing or just the entire industry for cars off of Western technology like the combustible engine. Also, the priority for the leadership is to try to get the country not to be so reliant on international sources of energy, which they see as vulnerable such as oil and gas.

That's one big part of the pivot of Vladimir Putin to get Russian oil and energy supplies that would be out of reach of Western powers so that they wouldn't have to worry about it so much. We've also seen China move to be much more active in the Middle East. There were rumors going around that President Xi might actually be going to Saudi Arabia, which would've been very surprising because it would've been the first trip for him out of the country. It would be so soon ahead of a very important leadership reshuffle. It hasn't happened, but the whole point is that he would want to be with a like-minded leader to help China with oil.

The only thing right now that we're seeing is that the climate discussions are off between the US and China because China said that they didn't want to talk to the United States about it in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent visit to Taiwan, which Beijing sees as part of China, and then also that her trip was an affront. Longer term, for its own goals and longer-term initiatives, I would think that China wouldn't fundamentally change its position on trying to be a climate change leader.

Brian Lehrer: A climate change leader and also, with respect to the technology that you mentioned, trying to be a leader in EV, electric vehicle technology, and things like that. Since you report from Beijing for the business channel of NBC, CNBC, when I was in China, the one time I was in China was 10 years ago. It was 2012, on a tour for journalists, and it wasn't an official tour by the government.

It was by an independent group who were showing us good things, bad things. Certainly, one of the things that they showed that was kind of promotional was a factory that was making solar panels. Funny enough, I was there on a rainy day. One of my favorite photos that I think I've ever taken was of this mass solar panel farm, you might call it, that we were walking through and somebody walking through with me with an umbrella.

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Brian Lehrer: Solar panels in the rain. Obviously, the point was they're trying to be a leader in solar panel technology and export it globally. How much has that turned out to be the case 10 years later?

Eunice Yoon: In terms of solar panels, they've definitely been able to export solar panels and do quite well. The government continues to subsidize certain industries, which it believes it wants to be a leader on. For example, with EV companies, they've done very well. The government at one point had decided that it wanted to pull some of the subsidies because it was just spending so much money, but that was just extended recently, namely, here in China because the government wants people to continue to buy EVs.

China's one of the biggest markets with EVs. Because they're so determined to become one of the leaders in the technology just because they don't want to be as beholden to certain Western technologies, they want to leapfrog that technology that even some slight problem such as, for example, the infrastructure in Chongqing and in other southwestern cities with EVs have had some problems like the charging stations haven't been able to source as much power as they'd like or had to be suspended, including Teslas. I don't think that that's going to, in any way, meaningfully change the overarching goal that the government has because they see it as bigger than just having a couple of companies that sell EVs. They want it to become a way that they could leapfrog Western technology.

Brian Lehrer: Any reaction there then to what we almost showed as our climate story of the week for this week, maybe we'll do it next week, the decision by California to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035? Any reaction in China to that? That obviously should be a boon for the EV market.

Eunice Yoon: I didn't see any specific reaction to that story here. My guess is that a lot of Chinese companies would want to be able to capitalize on any regulatory changes that could help the companies. Right now, the US and China relationship, it's just so tense right now that it's hard to see where Chinese companies would be able to take opportunities by US regulatory changes.

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Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, Bob. Yes, please.

Bob Henson: Excuse me. Just to throw in another tidbit on that, I think another challenge in terms of China responding to that California mandate is that the new tax benefits for EVs introduced as part of the Inflation Reduction Act specify that some or all of the materials for each vehicle have to be sourced or manufactured in North America, so that may complicate that matter.

Brian Lehrer: Let me get one more phone call in here. Elise in Kingston, you're on WNYC. Since we're taking calls from all over the world, it seems, I should specify Kingston, New York, not Kingston, Jamaica. Hi, Elise.

Elise: [chuckles] Hi, Brian. Long-time listener, love the show. Thank you for taking my call. I just had a question. Eunice, you mentioned the concern about the impending drought and ongoing drought. It's sort of related, but along the Gulf Coast countries, I've read an article in The Times about the so-called cloud wars and the attempt to, I think if I'm remembering correctly, capture humidity in the air and convert that into water. I'm wondering if that's something China is looking at and what the geopolitics around that are.

Eunice Yoon: They've already been doing it. I think you're talking about cloud seeding. This is when the authorities will shoot certain chemicals or metals into the air, which form crystals in the clouds. This is my basic understanding of it, which eventually forces rain to come. They've been using this type of technology since, I was told, the 1940s or so. It's something that we see in Beijing being used sometimes to clear the pollution and make the skies look blue on an important day politically.

That is one way that the authorities here are trying to make sure that they get more water sources. The focus right now by the central authorities is to get the local authorities to look for more water sources and get farmers the water that they need for their crops. Some of the firefighters have been driving to farmland to water the crops, transferring water to pig farms. There's just been a big push to try to make sure that they are able to get the autumn harvest taken cared for just because it's looking pretty grim right now.

Brian Lehrer: Bob, this sounds like it would be in your portfolio as a meteorologist.

Bob Henson: Yes, I have written a fair bit about cloud seeding over the years. As Eunice was saying, China has been very active in this. One challenge with cloud seeding is that you can't just take a clear sky day and make it rain. You have to have enough of a setup where there's clouds and moisture and it's on the edge of raining basically. Then, in some cases, cloud seeding could conceivably push it over to where it does rain. It's accepted that this probably does work some of the time in some cases, but proving that is really difficult.

Because as The Times article pointed out this morning, once it starts to rain, you've gotten rid of your case example studied, you can't go back and have the exact same cloud and see what would happen if you didn't seed it. Proving that cloud seeding is what made it rain is exceptionally difficult. There's been efforts for decades to do that proof in various countries. It's still have been a challenge. Nevertheless, many states in the US, many nations continue to proceed with cloud seeding. When you have a drought going on for weeks and weeks in a place and there's simply no rain at all, cloud seeding really isn't much help there, unfortunately.

Brian Lehrer: I'll mention as a side note, though this is our climate story of the week and not one of our human rights segments since I mentioned solar panels in China exporting solar panels, Wall Street Journal is reporting this summer, among other news outlets, that US customs has detained shipments from some of the biggest solar panel producers from China as authorities here enforced a new law targeting goods made with forced labor in China.

I think that very much includes forced Uyghur labor in China. I just wanted to acknowledge that as we end our coverage for today of the world's worst heatwave on record by many measures, some of which we've talked about in this segment happening in China right now. We leave it there with Bob Henson, meteorologist, journalist, and regular contributor to Yale Climate Connections, and Eunice Yoon, Beijing bureau chief and senior correspondent at CNBC and NBC News, who joined us live from Beijing, meaning thank you for staying up late for us, Eunice. We really appreciate it.

Eunice Yoon: [chuckles] My pleasure.

Brian Lehrer: Bob, thank you very much too.

Bob Henson: Thank you. My pleasure.

 

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