BEIJING, Jan 2, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Last year was China's warmest on record, its weather agency said, as the world experiences a surge in extreme weather fuelled by climate change.

China is the leading emitter of the greenhouse gases scientists say are driving global warming, though Beijing has pledged that carbon dioxide emissions will peak by 2030 and be brought to net zero by 2060.

The average national temperature for 2024 was 10.92 degrees Celsius (51.66 Fahrenheit), 1.03 degrees higher than average -- "the warmest year since the start of full records in 1961", the China Meteorological Administration said on its news site Wednesday night.

"The top four warmest years ever were the past four years, with all top ten warmest years since 1961 occurring in the 21st century," it added.
China has already this year logged its hottest month in the history of observation in July, as well as the hottest August and the warmest autumn on record.

The United Nations said in a year-end message on Monday that 2024 was set to be the warmest year ever recorded worldwide.

India on Wednesday said 2024 was its hottest year since 1901, while Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said on Thursday that the past year marked its second-warmest year since records began in 1910.

Global warming, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels, is not just about rising temperatures but the knock-on effect of all the extra heat in the atmosphere and seas.

Warmer air can hold more water vapour, and warmer oceans mean greater evaporation, resulting in more intense downpours and storms.
Impacts are wide-ranging, deadly and increasingly costly, damaging property and destroying crops.

In central Beijing, finance professional Xu Yici lamented that warmer-than-usual weather had affected the city's traditional winter pastime of ice skating.

"There's no ice in the Summer Palace. I was going to go ice skating at the Summer Palace, but I didn't get to do it this year," Xu told AFP.
- Dozens killed -

Dozens of people were killed and thousands evacuated during floods around the country last year.
In May, a highway in southern China collapsed after days of rain, killing 48 people.

Residents of the southern city of Guangzhou experienced a record-breaking long summer, with state media reporting there were 240 days where the average temperature was above 22C (71.6F), breaking the record of 234 days set in 1994.

Sichuan, Chongqing, and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River suffered from heat and drought in early autumn.

But Xue Weiya, an IT worker in Beijing, told AFP he believed "the Chinese government is doing a very good job of protecting the environment, so I don't think the weather... will have a big impact on us".

Globally, 2024 saw deadly flooding in Spain and Kenya, multiple violent storms in the United States and the Philippines, and severe drought and wildfires across South America.

Natural disasters caused $310 billion in economic losses in 2024, Zurich-based insurance giant Swiss Re has said.

The 2015 Paris climate accords aimed to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels -- and to 1.5C if possible.

In November, the World Meteorological Organization said the January-September mean surface air temperature was 1.54C above the pre-industrial average measured between 1850 and 1900.