China is witnessing record floods, which have caused heavy losses of lives and property. While fires in California displaced tens of thousands, Antarctic winds in southeastern Australia caused snowfall on Saturday.
The Chinese authorities said that the famous Three Gorges Dam - the largest hydroelectric station in the world - has been facing the largest flow of water since its establishment in 2003 for a week.
China relies on its network of dams to curb floods, but thousands of homes have been flooded by record floods this year.
Between last June and early August, dams and reservoirs on the Yangtze River, the longest river in Asia (6,300 km), contained 30 billion cubic meters of water, according to the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
The director of the Earth Observatory in Singapore, Benjamin Horton, explained that when the air temperature rises, it traps more moisture which leads to heavy rains.
According to the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources, the water in 53 rivers has reached historic levels this summer.
"This summer floods are a warning to China in the field of climate change," said Li Shu, an analyst for the environmental non-governmental organization "Greenpeace".
"In general, residents of China's gigantic cities are spared from rising water levels, but a large part of outlying areas along the Yangtze River are on the front line," Li Shuo said.
Authorities said more than 165,000 hectares of crops were affected last week in the southwestern Sichuan Province.
Sometimes, villages are sacrificed and their inhabitants evacuated in order to protect densely populated cities.
To reduce the human cost, China is also working to strengthen its flood control system, as well as speedy evacuations of residents.
Floods in the past two months have killed 219 people in China, and this number is less than half the annual rate for the past five years, according to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, which means the effectiveness of the measures taken by the authorities in this field.
But the economic cost of floods is rising, as it registered a 15% increase in 2020, to 179 billion yuan (22 billion euros), the authorities announced this week.
Thunderbolts and fires
In California, raging fires have displaced tens of thousands of people in several parts of the state on the American West Coast.
Thousands of lightning ignited the fires, fueled record temperatures and extremely low humidity levels, and have so far claimed at least 5 lives.
And the authorities explained that tens of thousands of people had to leave their homes in California, to escape the hundreds of fires that covered the skies of many of its areas, clouds of thick smoke.
The burning fires destroyed nearly 90,000 hectares of green space, threatening vineyards in Napa and Sonoma provinces, which in recent years have witnessed similar fires.
And last Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom - in a speech he gave at the Democratic National Convention - emphasized the direct causal link between climate change and these fires.
"Climate change is a reality. If you don't believe it, come to California," Newsom said.
Antarctic winds
And in Australia, the Antarctic winds led to snowfall on Saturday in several states, and many enjoyed the rare event despite strong winds and heavy snow that closed some roads.
Social media was flooded with images of snow-covered cities and landmarks across New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory, as residents rushed to record a sudden snowfall in early spring.
"We saw light snow arriving in Canberra today. We also heard some showers falling from it on the parliament building" in the country's capital, the Met Office said in a tweet.
The office added that the snow had exceeded one meter in a number of Alpine regions, and that the cold weather was likely to continue for several days.