Newsletter Issue 22 (August 2022)

《颱風解密：你也可以做天氣達人》經已出版

開卷有益 – 香港氣象學會第二本科普書籍《颱風解密：你也可以做天氣達人！》早前於香港書展期間出版。主編岑智明先生與學會發言人梁榮武先生亦在書展中分享新書內容。對氣象有興趣的你豈能錯過？《颱風解密：你也可以做天氣達人！》已於各大書店和網上有售，你亦可以到這連結經氣象學會購買。

The Weather of July 2022 – A July with record-breaking high temperatures

With a stronger than usual subtropical ridge persisting over southern China and bringing prolonged high temperature weather to the region in the month, July 2022 was the hottest month in Hong Kong since records began in 1884, breaking the previous record set in July 2020. With a total of 25 hot nights, July 2022 was the month with the highest number of hot nights on record and the 21 consecutive hot nights that started from 9 July also set a new record.

“This heatwave is the new normal,” says WMO Secretary-General

“In the future, this kind of heatwaves are going to be normal. We will see stronger extremes. We have pumped so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that the negative trend will continue for decades. We haven’t been able to reduce our emissions globally,” said Prof. Taalas. “I hope that this will be a wake-up call for governments and that it will have an impact on voting behaviors in democratic countries”, he said.

Climate change: More studies needed on possibility of human extinction
Catastrophic climate change outcomes, including human extinction, are not being taken seriously enough by scientists, a new study says. According to this new analysis, the closest attempts to directly understand or address how climate change could lead to global catastrophe have come from popular science books such as The Uninhabitable Earth and not from mainstream science research.

Climate impacts have worsened vast range of human diseases
More than half of the human diseases caused by pathogens have been worsened at some point by the sort of impacts associated with the climate crisis, a new and exhaustive study of the link between disease and climatic hazards has found. Diseases such as Zika, malaria, dengue, chikungunya and even Covid-19 have been aggravated by climate impacts such as heatwaves, wildfires, extreme rainfall and floods.

Chinese companies seek global carbon market for green hydrogen

A project that supplied green hydrogen for buses at the Winter Olympics could be the first of its kind to sell carbon credits through the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Three Chinese organisations are leading the charge to create an international carbon market for green hydrogen. They have proposed a methodology, pending approval from CDM, for calculating emission reductions from green hydrogen projects to sell as carbon credits. The buyers of those reductions – mainly countries and companies – could use them towards their net zero goals.

災害天氣國家重點實驗室深圳大氣科學試驗超級站建成

超級站是災害天氣國家重點實驗室和深圳市國家氣候觀象台在現有觀測基礎上，進一步協同創新、合作共建的大氣科學試驗超級站，也是實驗室繼廣東龍門、西藏墨脫之後的第三個大氣科學超級試驗站。該超級站主要聚焦城市邊界層和大氣垂直觀測，目前已部署二維雨滴譜儀、雨量計、微波輻射計、全天空成像儀、移動探測車等地基觀測儀器，以及包括W波段調頻連續波雷達、Ka/Ku雙頻垂直探測雷達、C波段調頻連續波垂直探測雷達和L波段風廓線雷達在內的五波段垂直指向雷達，具備對雲、雨、風精細垂直結構的觀測能力。

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