At Least 30 Dead Amid Heavy Rain, Landslides in Northern China

Beijing’s municipal flood control headquarters activated the highest level of flood-control emergency response mechanism on Monday, ordering the public to stay indoors, closing schools, suspending ongoing construction and other tourism activities until further notice. 

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Heavy rainfall in northern China has killed at least 30 people since Wednesday, local authorities have confirmed. 

Among them, two casualties were recorded in the Yanqing district and 28 in the Miyun district, where 543.4 millimeters of rain were recorded since Thursday. For comparison, the annual average rainfall in Beijing is 644 millimeters. 

The average rainfall in the Chinese capital was 165.9 millimeters as of Monday. The highest precipitation intensity occurred in Dongyu, Huairou district, with 95.3 millimeters falling within one hour on Saturday evening. 

The heavy rain caused flash floods through northern Beijing, including in the Miyun, Huairou, and Yanqing districts. “The flood came rushing in, just like that, so fast and suddenly. In no time at all, the place was filling up,” Zhuang Zhelin, a shop owner in Miyun district, told the BBC. 

Since Wednesday, a total of 19 national meteorological stations in northern China have broken monthly precipitation records. The cumulative precipitation over the weekend in northern Shaanxi, northern Hebei, and Beijing generally exceeded 100 millimeters, and the cumulative precipitation in northern Shijiazhuang and western Baoding – two cities in the Hebei province – exceeded 400 millimeters, according to Xinhua. 

The disaster has damaged 31 roads, with 16 yet to be fixed as of Tuesday. The city’s power system was severely damaged, with power outages recorded in 136 villages and over 1,800 base stations out of service. A total of 80,332 people have been evacuated across Beijing.

Beijing’s municipal flood control headquarters activated the highest level of flood-control emergency response mechanism on Monday, ordering the public to stay indoors unless necessary, closing schools, suspending ongoing construction and other tourism activities until further notice. 

According to Zhang Tao, Chief Forecaster of the China Meteorological Observatory, the heavy rainfall is likely a result of a combination of factors associated with the summer monsoon and the subtropical high, which carries abundant heat conducive to the formation of unstable atmospheric stratification, leading to heavy sudden rainfall. 

Zhang also said that the simultaneous presence of multiple typhoons is also directly related to the current heavy rainfall in northern China. 

Neighboring Hebei province was also affected by the downpours, with a landslide in a village near the city of Chengde killing four people, with eight others still missing.

The last time Beijing experienced such severe rainfall was in 2023. Due to the residual circulation of Typhoon Doksuri, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region experienced extreme rainstorms that were rarely seen in history. The cumulative rainfall in the Wangjiayuan Reservoir in Changping, Beijing, reached 744.8 millimeters, the city’s largest rainfall in 140 years. 

Climate Change

There is consensus among climate experts that events like this are becoming stronger and more frequent in a rapidly warming world.

A warmer atmosphere, heated by fossil fuel emissions, can hold more moisture, resulting in heavier downpours. For every 1C that Earth’s atmospheric temperature rises, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere can increase by about 7%.

Based on the study published in March, surface sea temperature warming and atmospheric moistening trends over the ocean are likely to generate a stronger typhoon, along with a more intense remnant circulation with enhanced precipitation over land later. 
The average sea surface temperature for June was 20.72C, the third-highest value on record for the month, 0.13C below the June 2024 record, Copernicus said.