After long neglect, comes a period of warming | CD Voice

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The dog days of summer ran wild this year, leaving us to do the panting. 

Even the nuanced, 24 traditional Chinese solar periods of the year couldn't do it justice. Xiao shu (little heat)? Who were they kidding? Da shu (big heat)? That didn't begin to describe it.

Day after day, it was relentlessly hot and sticky. But now, with the end in sight, we can catch our breath and take stock of what happened. 

Throughout China, even in the north, this has been the summer of the heat wave. In late July, AFP reported, China Meteorological Administration was issuing warnings that temperatures would hit 41 ℃ in eastern and central provinces. 

The Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced that at least 10 people had died of heatstroke. A Shanghai TV station's video of a slice of pork cooking to perfection on a stone outdoors was an online favorite. 

It wasn't just in China that the mercury threatened to pop the tops off thermometers. In mid-June, CNN reported that the southwestern United States was in the grip of a "dangerous, potentially deadly heat wave".

Las Vegas, Nevada, tied its heat record of 47 ℃. American Airlines canceled 50 flights in Phoenix, Arizona, when the thermometer hit 49 ℃. And the temperature in Death Valley, California, soared to a blistering 54.5 ℃.

In Europe, wildfires raged in Italy, near the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, and in Portugal — all of them sparked by intense summer heat.

But all of these places lie in the southern part of the continent. Surely, northern latitudes fared better.

All hell breaks loose as the tundra thaws, said The Guardian headline on a report in mid-July that a Siberian heat wave, with temperatures hovering at 30 ℃, was melting the permafrost. The warmth revived dormant anthrax spores embedded in the frost, and 20 people were infected. One boy died.

▲ One of the giant craters discovered on the Yamal Peninsula.

Reindeer herders in the Yamal Peninsula heard a deafening explosion and saw flames and smoke shoot into the air. Apparently, as the permafrost melted, large deposits of methane were freed and ignited. They found a crater at the site, and 14 other deep craters have been found across the region. 

Vast swaths of the Alaskan permafrost are also melting, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

In the Southern Hemisphere, too, where it is now winter, there have been recent signs of warming. Last month, a 5,800-sq-km iceberg — that's about nine-tenths the area of Shanghai — broke off from Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf. 

Would it be jumping to conclusions to suggest that these many examples of unusual atmospheric warmth are signs of global warming? Maybe.

But let's do it anyway.

For generations, we have victimized Earth, and the damage has now reached the tipping point. It's too late to escape some of the harm we've brought on ourselves, but we might have a chance of preventing catastrophe. 

Of course, all major countries would have to pitch in, cooperate with initiatives such as the Paris Agreement. 

Not all but one.  

About the author: 

John Lydon is a copy editor from the United States.

About the broadcaster: 

Greg Fountain is a copy editor and occasional presenter for China Daily. 

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