Shanghai will take the lead in mapping out a climate-change forecast for east China and developing measures to help combat the regional effects of global warming.

The plans for a study that is expected to help guide regional emissions-control activities over the next 30 years were unveiled yesterday at a meeting in Shanghai attended by meteorological officials from the city and six east China provinces.

As leader of the project, the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau has hired Chen Baode, a climate scientist who worked for the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration for nearly a decade, as senior adviser for the mission.

"It's time we should pay attention to climate change," Chen said during yesterday's meeting.

Bureau officials didn't reveal the cost of the survey or the number of researchers who would work on it.

The effort follows a series of regional climate phenomena that could have been caused by a buildup of greenhouse gases and an increase in temperature.

It also comes on the heels of the United Nation's recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that concluded human activities are "very likely" the cause of global warming.

Researchers in the regional program will spend the next three years developing a climate forecast for the next 20 to 30 years. The predications will be based on trends found in historical data, including ground-based readings and satellite recordings made since the 1970s.

"Once our assessment is made, we will make suggestions to governments for restructuring resource-based industries," Chen said.

Shanghai's gross domestic product has maintained double-digit growth for 15 straight years. While energy consumed per unit of GDP is being reduced, overall emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide are on the rise.

A direct link between the city's rapid economic growth and local climate change may be difficult to prove, but experts are concerned over recent weather patterns.

Among the unsettling signs, Shanghai's average temperature during the first 10 days of February was around 9 degrees Celsius, four degrees higher than the usual. On February 6, the mercury hit 23.4 degrees, the highest for that date in the past 14 years.

Shanghai is not alone in reporting weather anomalies. On February 5, the high reached 16 degrees in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, the hottest for that day since 1840.

On February 3, Beijing reported a high of 12.8 degrees, setting a 50-year record.

"Even Shanghai's traditional Plum Rain season has become much drier in recent years," said Lei Xiaotu, head of the climate research center at the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau.

The Plum Rain period, which used to bring downpours in June or July, now passes more quickly than it did in the past and yields less moisture - a phenomenon that bewilders Lei.

(Shanghai Daily February 13, 2007)