It may finally be feeling like autumn in Macao, but Guangzhou is technically still in summer, as it has failed to satisfy the official meteorological criteria for the onset of autumn.
According to China’s national standard for the division of climatic seasons, the onset of autumn begins when the average temperature is below 22°C, but remains equivalent to or above 10°C for five consecutive days.
Guangdong authorities, however, note that Guangzhou has still not fulfilled this criteria, despite the fact that summer began in the provincial capital on 23 March – the earliest onset of summer since 1961. (According to China’s meteorological standard, when there are five consecutive days above or equal to 22°C, summer is said to have begun on the first of those days.)
As of 13 November, Guangzhou had experienced 235 consecutive days of summer, breaking the previous record in 1994, which was 234 days.
[See more: We just lived through the hottest summer on record]
Generally speaking, Guangzhou enters autumn on 9 November, but the current summer is expected to continue until at least 18 November. For the time being, temperatures remain high. The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) expects the highest temperature in the city to hover from 27°C to 30°C between today and next Monday.
“There was no noticeable trend towards a long summer in 1994,” the deputy head of the CMA, Xu Xiaofeng, told Chinese language media. “This is a development that requires more attention.”
Macao has also been facing its own warm weather woes in recent years, with the city recording its hottest-ever Mid-Autumn Festival in September. To make matters worse, the local meteorological bureau predicts the number of hot days in the city could double by the middle of this century as a result of climate change.
According to the World Meteorological Organization, the global average temperature in the world this year is expected to hit an all-time high, breaking the record set in 2023.
