What’s wrong with Hong Kong’s weather? How climate change has caused recent erratic conditions

May was a tough month for operators of Tin Yeah, a community-supported agricultural programme in Hong Kong, and the farms that work with it.

With days-long downpours, two of the five local farms in the scheme, which directly connects growers and consumers, were forced to suspend production for as much as 10 days, running up losses in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Due to the unexpectedly cloudy weather, their summer harvest, including watermelons, cucumbers and string beans, is likely to be delayed. Meanwhile, the farms have had to replant aubergines while pests devoured all the leafy greens at one site. Sizzling heat at one point followed by plunging temperatures also added to their woes.

“The infestation was beyond imagination,” Carol Mak Ho-ying, operator of Tin Yeah, said. “We’re already worried about next week’s harvest. The huge temperature difference also killed the plants.”

For local farmers drawing up their planting schedules, climate change has become a major challenge. Their case is just one example of how Hong Kong is feeling its effects, with experts warning worse could be on the way including an increase in people sent to hospitals from the effects of extreme heat, more wildfires and a recurrence of droughts, not to mention further unpredictability in the weather.

“It was rather unusual this time. The rainfall was heavy, but it differed greatly from region to region,” Observatory director Cheng Cho-ming said earlier this month. “Under the premise of climate change, we expect rainstorms to be stronger in the future … and more frequent.”

Both local and international experts interviewed by the Post said the impact of climate change on the city of 1,100 sq km was becoming increasingly obvious, albeit manifesting itself slightly differently from places better-studied by scientists.