Second cold snap blankets Beijing in snow, ice
STORY: Freezing weather gripped large swathes of China on Thursday (December 14), forcing closures on parts of the highways linking Beijing to other major hubs.
Snow has been building since Monday (December 11) in the capital of nearly 22 million.
Forecasters warned temperatures in northern regions could approach historical lows for this time of the year or even surpass records.
The cold snap is moving from several northern provinces hit by blizzards to central and southern areas and pushing deep into the lower reaches of the Yangtze River delta.
Forecasters said sharp falls in temperature are expected over the next two days, particularly in the south where cities like Shanghai had experienced balmy temperatures of 68F earlier in the week.
China has grappled with weather extremes this year, from ultra-low temperatures in January to record rainfall and a blistering hot summer, in wild swings that scientists blame on climate change.
This week, nearly 200 nations agreed at the COP28 climate summit to start reducing consumption of fossil fuels to avert the worst of climate change.
Assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University Shanghai, Li Yifei says China is not an outlier in experiencing a range of severe weather conditions, be it heatwaves and droughts or extreme cold snaps.
“Extremity will become the new norm. So much so that even the word 'extremity' or 'extreme weather' I think is almost becoming a misnomer, because they're not so extreme. They're extreme in terms of the intensity of experience, but they're not so extreme in terms of the frequency at which they happen.”
The scale of China's ongoing construction was among the major contributors the country's carbon emissions, he added, saying that that alongside the U.S., China has unique responsibilities to work on reducing them.
"People need to be prepared individually because the chances of individuals being able to count on a government to provide for resources is, is becoming lower and lower. So it almost is becoming an individual responsibility problem for survival’s sake.”
