SOUTH China is reeling from a fierce outbreak of severe convective weather, as violent rainstorms, howling gales, and hailstones battered Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and nearby cities this week. The extreme conditions have not only disrupted daily life but also drawn sharp concern from experts, who see in these events a broader and more troubling pattern directly tied to climate change.

On Monday, Foshan City in Guangdong Province recorded wind gusts of 35.7 meters per second — a force equivalent to a typhoon making landfall — with Force-12 winds reported across several urban districts. Such intensity, once rare outside of tropical cyclones, is becoming less of an anomaly.

Wu Hongyu, chief expert at the Guangdong Provincial Climate Center, noted that while individual extreme weather events are alarming, the real issue lies in the increasingly evident trend: Extreme weather and climate events are becoming more frequent, more intense, and more severe in recent years.

This is not merely anecdotal. Data spanning more than six decades paints a stark picture of a region under mounting climate pressure. Over the past 65 years, Guangdong’s annual average temperature has risen significantly by 0.22 degrees Celsius per decade, while the average number of hot days increased by 3.5 days per decade. Perhaps more telling for a densely populated, low-lying coastal province, the number of heavy rain days surged to a record 10.7 in 2024 — a dramatic leap from just 3.6 days in 1963. These shifting baselines are redrawing the boundaries of what constitutes “normal” weather, challenging long-held assumptions in urban planning, infrastructure design, and disaster preparedness.

In response, Guangdong Province unveiled its Climate Change Adaptation Action Plan (2025–2035) in February 2025, a comprehensive strategy designed to confront the new climate reality head-on. Key measures include enhancing monitoring and early warning systems to provide more precise and timely forecasts of extreme weather events; accelerating the construction of sponge cities to absorb, retain, and drain excess stormwater, thereby mitigating urban flooding; and upgrading physical defenses against typhoons, floods, and other disaster risks that are growing in both frequency and ferocity.

“Urban construction and renewal must be based on the new climate data instead of past experience,” Wu emphasized, underscoring the need to abandon outdated assumptions. “In the face of the global challenge of climate change, panic is of no avail. The only way forward is through scientific response.”

(SD-Agencies)