Beijing temps hit 30-year high

BEIJING, China (AP) -- The weather in China's capital has been unseasonably warm with temperatures hitting a 30-year high, state media said Tuesday amid concern over the country's soaring greenhouse-gas emissions.

The ice on Beijing's frozen Shichahai Lake is nearly half as thick as last year, averaging 5-12 cm due to a warmer winter.

 

China, already the world's largest producer and consumer of coal, is expected to surpass the United States 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 was expected to release a progress report later Tuesday on its efforts to deal with climate change.

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

The report said Chinese experts have projected that in the latter half of this century production of wheat, corn and rice in China will drop by as much as 37 percent, 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 percent. China already faces a severe water shortage, especially in the northern part of the country.