Beijing temperatures hit 30-year high

Winter temperatures in China’s capital have hit a 30-year high, it was reported today, amid concern over the country’s soaring greenhouse gas emissions.

China, already the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal, is expected to surpass the US as the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter in the next decade.

The China Daily newspaper said Beijing’s temperature hit 12.8 degrees Celsius on Saturday – a 30-year high for the date – prompting an early spring, with frozen lakes melting and trees blooming.

Beijing is trying to promote conservation, but the government is reluctant to adopt binding emissions limits, arguing that its people are too poor and its companies lack technology to set stringent goals.

China is expected to release a progress report later on its efforts to deal with climate change.

A separate report released last month said climate change would harm China’s ecology and economy in the coming decades, possibly causing large drops in agricultural output.

The report said Chinese experts had projected that in the latter half of this century production of wheat, corn and rice in China would drop by as much as 37%, and that the country’s average temperatures would rise by 2 or 3 degrees Celsius in the next 50 to 80 years.

It also said evaporation rates for some inland rivers would increase by 15%.

China already faces a severe water shortage, especially in the northern part of the country.