China blames climate change for extreme weather

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - China blamed global warming on Wednesday for this year's weather extremes, which have led to more than 700 deaths from flooding and left more than seven million with little access to water.

Such extremes are likely to get worse and more common in the future, said Song Lianchun, head of the China Meteorological Administration's Department of Forecasting Services and Disaster Mitigation.

"It should be said that one of the reasons for the weather extremes this year has been unusual atmospheric circulation bought about by global warming," Song told a news conference carried live on the central government Web site (www.gov.cn).

"These kind of extremes will become more frequent, and more obvious. This has already been borne out by the facts," he said. "I think the impact on our country will definitely be very large."

Some parts of China have had too much rain, and others too little this summer.

About 7.5 million people are suffering from drought in a wide swathe of the country which includes Jiangxi and Hunan in the south to Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces in the northeast, Xinhua news agency said.

In Jiangxi, Hunan and Heilongjiang, more than one third of agricultural land has been hit, the report added.

Temperatures have been topping out at about 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), which has strained power grids.