Beijingers will be reaching for their handkerchiefs and face masks this spring as dusty weather has been forecast for the city because of too little winter snow. This is according to Shi Hanmin, head of the municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, who gave the gloomy outlook on January 22.

China's grey capital has only seen two snowfalls this winter and the temperature on sanjiu days, a traditional term for the coldest nine days of the year, stood at minus 1.3 degrees Celsius, the warmest for 13 years.

Actually, it is not only Beijing where temperatures are on the rise. China as a whole was hot in 2006-and that's not talking about just the economy. Average temperatures had the mercury up to steamy levels not seen since 1951. With the heat came a steady stream of natural disasters, racking up massive economic losses of 212 billion yuan, next only to 1998, when severe flooding devastated the mainland.

With this disturbing climatic scenario, the release of the country's first-ever National Assessment Report on Climate Change couldn't have come at a better time. On December 26 the Ministry of Science and Technology, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly published the country's first-ever National Assessment Report on Climate Change. The report, which was compiled over a period of four years, shows the worrying impact global warming has had and how it will affect China in the future.

More heat and disasters

Xu Ying, an expert on climate change with CMA who participated in the writing of the report, told Beijing Review that the rise in average temperature correlates to a more dramatic fluctuation of extreme temperatures from the perspective of statistics. "The accelerated water circulation under a higher temperature will enhance the intensity and frequency of droughts and floods," he said, adding that the direct cause of extreme weather events is also related to global warming.

The report predicts that the average temperature in China will rise 1.3 to 2.1 degrees Celsius by 2020. The resultant high occurrence of heat waves could spur an increase in heart and blood diseases, malaria and dengue fever.

An important conclusion of the report is that the trend of rising temperatures in China will last for the next 100 years, while extreme weather events and natural disasters will occur more frequently as a result of accelerated warming.

The relationship between the rise of temperatures and extreme weather events is a dangerous one.

Severe natural disasters in 2006 took 2,704 lives and over 200 billion yuan in economic losses. The worst of these included Typhoon Saomai, the most destructive typhoon in Zhejiang Province in 100 years, as well as the worst droughts Chongqing Municipality and Sichuan Province have experienced in a century.

Meanwhile, the country's annual average rainfall is projected to increase by 2 to 3 percent by 2020. This increase in precipitation is not expected to protect north China against deepening water shortages and mounting droughts, however, because warming temperatures will lead to greater evaporation, the study says. The report also envisions that continued warming will cause the runoff of rivers in the north to climb and runoff of rivers in the south to drop, which will lead to more frequent flooding and droughts and worsen the instability and regional water supply-and-demand contradiction.

It is not only rivers that are to be debilitated by the global warming. Predictions are that China's coastal sea level will rise by 0.01 meter to 0.16 meter by 2030, which will subject coastal areas to flooding and storms. This comes about because of glaciers in the nation's west melting down by 27.2 percent by 2050, according to the report.

Another imminent hazard posed by global warming to China, identified in the report, is food security. The report warns that both crop distribution and production will be affected by the changes in temperature and precipitation, with the output of major crops such as wheat, rice, and corn falling by up to 37 percent in the second half of the century if no effective measures are taken.

According to China Youth Daily's interview with Lin Erda, one of the senior consultants of the report and a researcher of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), China's population will peak at 1.5 billion around 2030, which requires the extra production of 100 million tons of grain every year; however, the report forecasts the total output of crops will be reduced by 5 to 10 percent by global warming by then, which means China will have a shortfall of 30 million to 50 million tons. "I think many people are overoptimistic about the issue of grain security," Lin said.