REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

China Braces for Record Third Typhoon in a Week

BEIJING, China, August 7, 2012 (ENS) – China is facing its third typhoon in a single week, as Haikui strengthened from a tropical storm on Sunday into a typhoon on Monday afternoon.

“Within seven days our nation may be hit successively by three typhoons, the first time such circumstances have arisen since records have been taken,” Minister of Water Resources Chen Lei said in a statement.

“We are still dealing with the impact of Typhoons Saola and Damrey and now Typhoon Haikui is heading towards us,” he said.

At least 14 people are confirmed dead and five others are missing after typhoons Damrey and Saola blasted across China’s eastern coast over the weekend, authorities said Monday.

Now Typhoon Haikui is approaching East China’s Zhejiang province, heading for a stretch of coastline just south of the 23 million people living in Shanghai, the world’s largest city.

On Tuesday morning the center of Typhoon Haikui was located in the East China Sea, about 330 kilometers southeast of Shanghai.

Haikui is forecast to move west by north to northwest at a speed of 10-15 kilometers per hour, gaining intensity, and make landfall in the low-lying coastal area between Zhoushan and Yuhuan on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, according to the China Meteorological Administration, CMA.

Environment News Service (http://s.tt/1krzc)

China Braces for Record Third Typhoon in a Week

BEIJING, China, August 7, 2012 (ENS) – China is facing its third typhoon in a single week, as Haikui strengthened from a tropical storm on Sunday into a typhoon on Monday afternoon.

“Within seven days our nation may be hit successively by three typhoons, the first time such circumstances have arisen since records have been taken,” Minister of Water Resources Chen Lei said in a statement.

Typhoons Damrey and Saola head for China’s east coast as seen by a NASA’s MODIS satellite, August 1, 2012 (Photo courtesy NASA)

“We are still dealing with the impact of Typhoons Saola and Damrey and now Typhoon Haikui is heading towards us,” he said.

At least 14 people are confirmed dead and five others are missing after typhoons Damrey and Saola blasted across China’s eastern coast over the weekend, authorities said Monday.

Now Typhoon Haikui is approaching East China’s Zhejiang province, heading for a stretch of coastline just south of the 23 million people living in Shanghai, the world’s largest city.

On Tuesday morning the center of Typhoon Haikui was located in the East China Sea, about 330 kilometers southeast of Shanghai.

Haikui is forecast to move west by north to northwest at a speed of 10-15 kilometers per hour, gaining intensity, and make landfall in the low-lying coastal area between Zhoushan and Yuhuan on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, according to the China Meteorological Administration, CMA.

Environment News Service (http://s.tt/1krzc)

US Embassy: Beijing Air Quality Is 'Crazy Bad'

Pollution in Beijing was so bad Friday the U.S. Embassy, which has been independently monitoring air quality, ran out of conventional adjectives to describe it, at one point saying it was "crazy bad."

The embassy later deleted the phrase, saying it was an "incorrect" description and it would revise the language to use when the air quality index goes above 500, its highest point and a level considered hazardous for all people by U.S. standards.

The hazardous haze has forced schools to stop outdoor exercises, and health experts asked residents, especially those with respiratory problems, the elderly and children, to stay indoors.

"We've canceled 10 days worth of games since August," said David Niven, chief operating officer of China ClubFootball, which runs extensive youth and adult football leagues in Beijing. "If the air is above 240, some of the schools will ask us to move football games indoors or cancel them altogether. Because of the bad air this year, we've had to cancel more games than ever before."

Health experts say breathing polluted air can affect respiratory functions and worsen problems for those with asthma or allergies.

China's official air quality rating was 312 on Friday. Environmental groups and city residents have complained the government's measurement system consistently underreports the severity of the problem.

Beijing's official air monitors only measure relatively coarse particulate matter, whereas the U.S. system monitors smaller, deadlier dust particles.

Experts say Beijing's frequently bad air has been even dirtier recently because a growing number of factories and villages on the outskirts of the city are burning coal for the winter, and more than 1,200 new cars hit the roads each day.

Read more at NPR

Cotton Extends Rally to 15-Year High as Cold Weather Threatens China Crop

Cotton advanced for a fourth day, extending a rally to the highest price in more than 15 years as cold weather threatens the crop in China, the world’s largest user, boosting import demand and tightening global supplies.

December-delivery cotton advanced as much as 0.6 percent to 95.08 cents a pound on ICE Futures U.S. in New York, the highest price since June 1995. The contract traded at 95.06 cents a pound at 9:25 a.m. Singapore time.

Cotton-growing regions in central China “could turn wetter and cooler again early next week,” Telvent DTN Inc. said in a forecast yesterday. The condition of the country’s crop has deteriorated, compared with a year earlier, after low temperatures and prolonged rains delayed planting and crop development, the official Xinhua News Agency said on Sept. 11.

“There’s a concern that global supplies will tighten,” said Chung Yang Ker, an analyst at Phillip Futures Pte. in Singapore. He forecast the price may rise to $1, without citing a timeframe.

Read more at Bloomberg

China Society East China braced for typhoon onslaught

 

The China Meteorological Center continued to issue its typhoon alert at 10 am Tuesday as three tropical cyclones gathered around the coastal area of East China.

The three tropical cyclones would bring heavy rainstorms to several provinces in East China within 24 hours, including Zhejiang, Shandong, Jiangsu and Fujian, weather reports said.

The Center asked all ships and staff working on the ocean to return to port, and called for a halt to work at heights and large-scale outdoor gatherings.

Tropical storm No.7 Kompasu moved toward the East China Sea at a speed of 25 kilometers per hour Tuesday, which will result in torrential rainstorms for Shanghai

Read more at The Global Times

Brrr... coldest April in 50 years

A woman enjoys flowers while snow falls in Yantai city of Shandong province on Wednesday. Aff ected by a strong cold front from the north, the temperature in the city dropped to about 0 C.[Chu Yang/China Daily]

BEIJING - The country is experiencing its coldest April in nearly 50 years due to abnormal atmospheric circulation and a moving Arctic cold air mass, meteorological experts said on Wednesday.

The average temperature across the country in April hit its lowest mark since 1961, reaching 8.7 C, about 1.3 C below usual, according to the latest figures from the China Meteorological Administration.

Most parts of Northeast and North China have experienced comparatively lower temperatures since November, about 1.8 C lower than usual, official figures shows.

"The cold air mass in the Arctic has moved southward and met the abnormal atmospheric circulation, causing its movement eastward and influencing weather in China," said Zhou Bing, a researcher at the forecast room with the National Climate Center.

Read more at China Daily

Wanting Water

GOOD TO THE LAST DROP: A villager of Dawan Village of Pu'an County, Guizhou Province, uses a water pump to lift water from a drying pond to his tomato field (LIU JI) 

"The ravages of ongoing drought show what China's southern areas lack is not just water, but small farmland irrigation projects," said Zheng Fengtian, Deputy Director of the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China.

The worst-hit areas, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, are subtropical and blessed with bountiful annual precipitation and a large number of rivers. Most often people's concerns about natural disasters relate to floods rather than droughts. But the present and lasting drought spell, the worst in decades, has left farmers with nothing to do but watch their land miss spring plowing. Dry cracked land, mostly without irrigation facilities nearby, cannot be sowed.

The situation used to be better in these areas. In the 1950s and 1960s, when the land was farmed under collectives, the government invested aggressively in building a large number of irrigation facilities in the countryside all over China. The government investment equipped the majority of China's rural areas with effective irrigation systems. Summarizing the country's achievements in building irrigation projects nationwide over 40 years, a document issued by the Ministry of Water Resources in 1990 said China's total farmland area that could be effectively irrigated stood at 49 million hectares between 1949 and 1979, one quarter of the world's total. China, whose total area of effectively irrigated farmland ranked first in the world, also had a per-capita figure higher than the world average.

Read more at Beijing Review.

More wells made as drought deepens

Emergency wells were being drilled and cloud-seeding operations carried out in southern China, where the worst drought in decades has left millions of people without water and caused more than 1,000 schools to close.

Provincial and national land resources bureau officials met in Kunming, capital of the hardest-hit province of Yunnan, to discuss details of deploying workers to dig wells and increase cloud seeding and other aid to people in need of drinking water, according to a director at the Yunnan Land Resources Bureau.

"The situation here will get worse in the coming months before it gets any better, but hopefully with more wells and water being diverted to those in need, we can help ease the situation," said Mr Ma, who like many Chinese officials would give only his surname.

The drought, which has left south-western China suffering since last year, has affected about 61 million people and left more than 12 million acres (about 5 million hectares) barren in Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Chongqing and Guangxi, the official Xinhua News Agency cited the Ministry of Civil Affairs as saying.

Read more at Google News.