Heatwave in China has seen surge in energy demand with increased sales of air conditioners and handheld fans.

The number of high-temperature days China has experienced since mid-March is the highest on record, an official from the China Meteorological Administration said.

The administration said on Wednesday that 152 national weather observatories in China have recorded temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) since mid-July.

It also sent an alert to the country’s power industry to take timely response measures to handle a surge in power consumption as people turn to air conditioning and fans to tackle the soaring temperatures.

Last week, sweltering heat stretched from the densely populated city of Chongqing in the southwest of the country to Guangzhou on the coast, enveloping an area that is home to more than 200 million people.

In some parts of the central provinces of Hubei and Hunan, which are the same size as Italy and the United Kingdom, apparent temperatures, which is a measure of how hot the combination of heat, humidity and wind makes people feel, were forecast to reach as high as 50C (122F) last week.

Equivalent apparent temperatures were also expected in the southern provinces of Jiangxi and Guangdong – home to populations equal to the total of Spain and Mexico.

China’s Sanfu season — an agricultural marker denoting the peak of summer and believed to have been in use for more than two millennia — typically begins in mid-July and lasts through late August.

This year it is forecast to run until August 19.

Besides making life uncomfortable, scorching croplands and eroding farm incomes in China, higher temperatures can also affect manufacturing hubs and disrupt operations at key ports, as well as strain overburdened healthcare services.

As the world’s second most populous country, China has been the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases annually since overtaking the United States in 2006.

But it is also a global renewable energy powerhouse that aims to make its massive economy carbon-neutral by 2060, as part of global efforts to curb the most extreme effects of climate change.

Source:

Al Jazeera and news agencies