BEIJING
\nTorrential rains in China have killed at least 30 people and left dozens more missing, state media said on Thursday, as the country grinds through another summer of extreme weather.
\nConfirmation of the deaths came the same day that weather authorities said July was China\u2019s hottest month since records began six decades ago.
\nChina is the world\u2019s biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that scientists say are driving climate change and making extreme weather more frequent and intense.
\nHeatwaves this summer have scorched parts of northern China, while heavy rain has triggered floods and landslides in central and southern areas.
\nThis week\u2019s downpours were triggered by Typhoon Gaemi, which moved on from the Philippines and Taiwan to make landfall in eastern China a week ago, with hilly, landlocked Hunan province hit particularly hard.
\nMore than 11,000 people were evacuated from the city of Zixing after some areas endured record rainfall of 645 millimeters (25 inches) in just 24 hours, state news agency Xinhua said on Tuesday.
\nMany roads connecting townships in the Zixing area were temporarily cut off, which also affected the power supply and communications infrastructure.
\nState broadcaster CCTV said on Thursday the disruption was mostly over.
\n\u201cInitial findings show that there have been 30 deaths and 35 are missing,\u201d the report said, adding that search and rescue efforts were still ongoing. Xinhua said on Tuesday four people had been killed and three people were missing in Zixing.
\nThree people were killed in Hunan\u2019s Yongxing county, Xinhua also said Tuesday, while a landslide on Sunday killed 15 people elsewhere in the province.
\nLast month was \u201cthe hottest July since complete observations began in 1961, and the hottest single month in the history of observation,\u201d the national weather office said Thursday.
\nIt said the average July air temperature in China was 23.21 degrees Celsius (73.78 degrees Fahrenheit), exceeding the previous record of 23.17C (73.71F) in 2017.
\nThe mean temperature in every province was also \u201chigher than the average for previous years,\u201d with the southwestern provinces of Guizhou and Yunnan logging their highest averages, the weather office said.
\nIt forecast that the mercury would continue to climb in eastern regions this week, including Shanghai, where a red alert for extreme heat was in place on Thursday.
\n\u201cNext week will be more of the same. It\u2019s like being on an iron plate,\u201d wrote one user of the Weibo social media platform in response to the megacity\u2019s heat warning.
\nAnother quipped: \u201cIt\u2019s so hot. Did Shanghai do something to anger the gods?\u201c The nearby city of Hangzhou may hit 43C (109F) on Saturday, which would break its all-time record, the weather office said.
\nMiddle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River would likely see daily temperatures fall no lower than 30C (86F), it said.
\nThe news came little more than a week after Earth experienced its warmest day in recorded history.
\nPreliminary data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service showed the daily global average temperature was 17.15C (62.9F) on July 22.
\nThat was 0.06C hotter than the day before, which itself broke the all-time high temperature set a year earlier by a small margin.
\nChina has pledged to bring emissions of carbon dioxide to a peak by 2030, and to net zero by 2060, but has resisted calls to be bolder.
\nIt long depended on highly polluting coal power to fuel its massive economy but has emerged as a renewable energy leader in recent years.
\nResearch showed last month that China is building almost twice as much wind and solar energy capacity than every other country combined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING Torrential rains in China have killed at least 30 people and left dozens more missing, state media said on Thursday, as the country grinds through another summer of extreme weather. Confirmation of the deaths came the same day that weather authorities said July was China\u2019s hottest month since records began six decades ago. China […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-422172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n