A Chinese meteorological expert has called on people to take a scientific attitude toward climaticand weather changes, instead of being pessimistic and panicking.
Lu Juntian, an expert with the State Meteorological Center (SMC), believes that human beings will increase their understanding of nature and become more adept at forecasting and preventing natural disasters.
China has experienced frequent climatic changes since the beginning of the year. These include a warm winter, regional dust storms, and the present higher than usual spring temperatures which are affecting most of the country.
Lu says, people should not make sweeping statements about the weather and call it abnormal without scientific back-up.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), "abnormal weather" is defined as a climatic phenomenon which occursonly every 25 years or more.
Based on meteorological statistics, the just-ended winter is not only the 16th consecutive warm winter in China but is also China's second warmest winter in 40 years, Lu says.
Using the WMO definition it can thus be called abnormal weather, Lu says.
As for the dust storms which hit much of north China recently, Lu says, they cannot be called "abnormal" according to the WMO definition. Over the last 25 years and even longer the frequency of sandstorms in China has reduced and not increased, Lu adds.
Lu says that people should not refer to climatic changes in one area as if they were occurring countrywide. On March 31, the temperature in Beijing reached 28.7 degrees Celsius, the city's highest since 1914 for this time of the year. This maybe abnormal in Beijing, but not for the whole country, Lu notes.
The expert says that at present, the earth's climate is undergoing marked changes, one of which is global warming. Becauseof this all countries in the world, including China, are encountering varying degrees of abnormal climatic changes.
Statistics show that the number of climatic disasters worldwide in the 1991-2000 period was five times higher than 50 years ago.
To counteract this, all countries in the world are working hard to reduce the harmful effects of extreme weather and climatic changes, Lu says.
(Xinhua News Agency April 4, 2002)
