CHINA: Natural disasters have claimed 2,000 lives in China this year and scientists warn worse is to follow, writes Clifford Coonan in Beijing
Storms, baking heat, devastating floods and drought have killed over 2,000 people in China this year, and environmental scientists expect more extreme weather to blight the country as the effect of global warming becomes more acute.
The deadliest natural disasters are earthquakes, which have accounted for 54 per cent of natural disaster deaths since 1949, followed by floods and droughts, which make up another 40 per cent of deaths.
Typhoons, landslides and rock-and-mud flows also take their toll - the flooding caused by typhoon Bilis alone left 612 people dead and 208 more missing in the country.
Natural disasters cost China an average of €10 billion a year, affect 200 million people and damage 40 million hectares of crops each year.
This has been a particularly bad year, with meteorological catastrophes costing €16 billion in damage.
The effects are being seen nationwide. The southwestern province of Sichuan, which includes the enormous Chongqing municipality with a population of 32 million people, has seen a slight fall in average temperatures over past decades, possibly thanks to a protective umbrella of pollution or cloud.
But this year much of the region, and Chongqing itself, has sweltered under record-breaking hot days and the lowest rainfall for nearly 60 years, prompting fears that long-term change may be on the cards.
One explanation given is shrinking snow cover on the neighbouring Tibet-Qinghai plateau.
Dong Wenjie, director-general of the Beijing Climate Centre, said that working out the individual causes of increasingly violent weather was difficult. "But we know the broad background is global warming. That's clear. It's a reminder that global warming will bring about increasingly extreme weather events more often."
Global warming, as well as overgrazing, over-logging and collection of firewood, could harm China's efforts to halt the encroaching desert - which have so far proven remarkably successful.
The deserts are believed to be shrinking by 7,585sq km (2,929sq miles)annually, compared with an annual expansion of 10,400sq km (4,015sq miles) at the end of last century.
Beijing is the world's second-largest producer of greenhouse gases after the United States, and top climate scientists forecast a rise in mean temperatures across China which would force major changes in rainfall, desertification, river flows and crop production.
"Extreme weather will become more frequent across China because of various factors, including global warming," said Huang Jianfa, director of the earthquake emergency relief division of the China Seismological Bureau.
Qin Dahe, director of the China Meteorological Administration, said China has had a higher incidence of natural disasters this year than in the same period last year and said global warming was the key factor.
He said more effort was needed to improve the country's ability to prevent and limit the damage caused by natural disasters.
However, the Chinese government remains set against imposing a ceiling on emissions, as its primary focus is economic growth and it does not wish to interfere in any way with that.
Although it has signed the Kyoto Protocol, China insists responsibility for tackling global warming lies with developed countries that are - per capita - still much bigger polluters.