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North China experiences its longest rainy period since 1961 and the hottest summer in country's history

The national weather agency reported on Tuesday that China experienced its hottest summer in 1961, while the north of the country had its longest rainy period for the same time frame. Scientists have linked the atmospheric chaos to climate change.

Huang Zhou said at a press conference that the summer plum rains, named because they coincide with the plums ripening on China's Yangtze River, began one week sooner than usual.

Huang said that large areas of the country were experiencing extreme heat. There were 13.7 days of high temperatures, which is 5.7 days more than the average of June to August.

He said that the national average temperature for all of Canada was 22 degrees Celsius (72.14 Fahrenheit), which is 1.1 degrees Celsius above normal. This was tied with 2024, as being the highest temperature since 1961.

The second largest economy in the world, China, had to contend with a subtropical high pressure system that caused warm, dry weather and the East Asian Monsoon this summer. The torrential downpours that pushed up from Southeast Asia caused the death of hundreds and billions in economic losses.

Extreme weather is a challenge for policymakers. Heavy rains can overwhelm aging flood defences, displacing millions of people, and scorching heat can strain the power grid.

Beijing's northern Huairou District and the neighbouring Miyuan District received an entire year's rain in one week, late last month. This precipitation triggered flash floods which devastated villages and led to 44 deaths in the deadliest flooding since 2012.

China does not provide a count of heat-related death, but in a report from 2023 published in The Lancet, the number was estimated at 50,900 in 2022. This is a doubled figure compared to 2021.

According to the EU-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service, on Tuesday, August 2025 will be the third warmest month in the world, with an average temperature 0.49C higher than the 1991-2020 average.

The two warmest augusts recorded in the world were 2023 and 2024.

Even the oceans are hotter.

C3C's monthly bulletin stated that the temperatures of the sea surface in most areas in northern Pacific were above average, and in some cases reached record highs. (Reporting and editing by Saad sayeed; Ryan Woo and Joe Cash)

(source: Reuters)