Beijing has recorded an average temperature of 21.5 degrees Celsius since it enters autumn, 2.4 degrees Celsius higher than its regular falls.

Meteorologists at the State Climate Center said on Friday that it is the second warmest fall the city experienced over the past 50 years.

Beijing was not unique. The meteorologists said unusually warm weather persisted in the fall throughout the country, with a temperature 0.9 degrees Celsius higher on average.

In the summer this year, China recorded an average temperature of 21.4 degrees Celsius, one degree Celsius higher than regular years. All this manifested climate in China has become warmer, and the process conformed to the trend of global warming, according to Ye Dianxiu, a researcher with the state climate center.

Another researcher from the center, Liu Yanxiang, said the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau experienced a record hot summer this year. Part of it, at an altitude of 5,000 meters, helped a lot with the heating-up of the atmosphere and then directed affected weather in northern China.

Meanwhile, the interaction of high pressure from the south Asian sub-continent in the west and subtropical high pressure in the east helped form a scorching weather in southwestern areas, particularly Chongqing, which suffered a worst drought over the past five decades.

Meteorologists in Beijing forecast that China would likely encounter a warm winter over the turn of the year, as a new Elninoin the Pacific at the central and eastern part of the equator.

(Xinhua News Agency October 14, 2006)