Goodbye winters, thanks to warming
HK to feel no more cold weather by the end of the century, says Observatory
Cold weather will become a thing of the past in Hong Kong by the end of the century and the nightmare scenario of the movie Day After Tomorrow could become a possibility within one or two centuries if nothing is done to halt climate change.
This was the warning yesterday from the Hong Kong Observatory, which also said the city could expect to be battered by more and more extreme weather as winter began to disappear.
The predictions for Hong Kong in the next 100 years, from scientific models constructed by the observatory's forecasters, were outlined to mark World Meteorological Day yesterday.
'While the scenario depicted in Day After Tomorrow is unlikely to happen in a couple of years, it is now coming into the view of our mental telescope within one or two centuries from now,' observatory director Lam Chiu-ying said.
In the film, global warming upsets the world climate balance, triggering catastrophic storms and a new ice age.
Mr Lam said the number of cold days in Hong Kong, with the temperature at or below 12 degrees, is falling gradually and will disappear by 2090.
Weather data from 1961 to 1990 showed that Hong Kong recorded an average of 21 cold days between December and February.
But from 1971 to 2000, the average was reduced to 19 days. According to the latest projection, the average will be only 0.8 days by 2090.
The number of hot days, with the temperature at 28 degrees or above, will rise from 15 days to 35.
The unstable climate will also bring more extreme weather in the coming century, with three extremely dry years where annual rainfall would drop below 1,000mm and six more extremely wet years with rainfall of more than 3,000mm. The present annual average rainfall is about 2,400mm. The Observatory's records have only two extremely wet or dry years - 900mm in 1963 and 3,343mm in 1997.
Erratic weather patterns have already been noted in recent years. Europe was hit by heat waves last summer. Britain and France recorded the hottest July on record, with more than 100 people dying in France. In the summer of 2003 a heat wave killed tens of thousands across Europe.
To tackle climate change, the European Union this month promised to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.
News reports on the mainland have said that droughts, destructive typhoons and other extreme weather events caused economic losses of 212 billion yuan and more than 2,700 deaths last year.
Nine concerned government departments have worked together with scientists from the Chinese Academy of Science to assess the impact of climate change on China.
The assessment, released in January, predicts China's average temperatures will rise by 2.3 to 3.3 degrees by 2050. Annual average rainfall will also increase 5 to 7 per cent by 2050. The central government will formulate a national plan based on this assessment.
Hong Kong has not formulated a climate change policy or set greenhouse gas reduction targets, but the Observatory said it would review the climate projections when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases data and the methodology of its global projections in May.
The panel released a summary in February saying if the global temperature were to rise 1.9 to 4.6 degrees by 2095, Greenland's ice could melt completely, leading to a seven-metre rise in sea levels.