Hong Kong has experienced its hottest October since records began in 1884, with the city’s Observatory recording an average temperature of 27.3 degrees Celsius for the month, 1.6 degrees higher than normal.
“Mainly attributable to the weaker northeast monsoon over southern China, October 2024 was much warmer than usual in Hong Kong,” the Observatory said in a statement on Monday.
The mean maximum temperature for the month was 30.3 degrees Celsius, while the mean minimum temperature was 25.4 degrees, 2.2 degrees and 1.5 degrees higher than monthly averages, and the highest on record for October.
It was also much drier than normal with just 11.3 millimetres of rainfall. That was about 9 per cent of the 120.3 millimetres recorded on average between 1991 and 2020.
This follows a summer that was, in the words of the government forecaster, “much hotter than usual” as average temperatures increase.
See also: ‘It’s happening to us as well’ – Hong Kong climate advocates sound alarm at COP
Rising temperatures globally are a result of increased carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere and other human activity. In 2015, 196 members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted an agreement to keep the mean global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and preferably to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees. China is among the signatories.
In June, a report from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service found that average global temperatures had been 1.5 degrees higher than they were in the late 1800s for 12 consecutive months. According to climate data analysis platform Berkeley Earth, Hong Kong had warmed 1.7 degrees by 2022.
While the 1.5 degrees barrier does not signal a permanent breach of the critical limit, which is measured over a span of decades, it sends a clear warning that climate change is intensifying.
Sunny spells were forecast for Tuesday, with the Observatory predicting highs of 27 degrees Celsius and generally fine and dry days to follow.
Tropical Cyclone Yinxing, currently located to the east of the Philippines’ largest island Luzon, had by Tuesday morning intensified into a typhoon. According to its present track, it is expected to enter within 800 kilometres of Hong Kong as a severe typhoon on Friday morning before weakening.
“Under the combined effect of the northeast monsoon and Yinxing, it will be windy over the south China coastal waters during the weekend and early next week,” the Observatory said.
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