People planning to spend New Year’s Eve outside in northern areas may need to bundle up well, as the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said that the mercury could drop as low as 11˚C in coastal areas.
According to the weather bureau’s forecast, the temperature tomorrow night could be as low as 12˚C or 13˚C in Taipei City, 12˚C in the central region, 15˚C in the south and 16˚C in east.
The bureau also said chances of rain would be high in northern and northeastern regions, although rain was unlikely to interrupt festive events on New Year’s Eve.
While chances of rain in central and southern Taiwan are low, those eager to watch the first sunrise of the new year may be disappointed, as their view is likely to be blocked by thick clouds, the bureau said.
Cheng Ming-dean (鄭明典), director of the bureau’s weather forecast center, said southeastern areas — including Taimali (太麻里), Lanyu (蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) — would be the most ideal spots to see the sunrise on Friday morning.
There is a 50 percent chance of seeing the sun rise from the sea at these locations, he said.
According to the bureau, people in Lanyu will be the first in Taiwan to see the first sunrise of next year, at 6:33am.
The bureau yesterday also published a study on weather changes in the country over more than a century, which showed that local temperatures have risen by an average of 0.8˚C since 1897.
The average temperature rose by 1.2˚C in plains areas and 1.4˚C in metropolitan areas, according to the study, which compiled weather statistics from 1897 until last year.
The survey also found that the nation’s isotherms — contour lines on a map connecting points of equal temperature at a given time — have been pushed northward by around 150km as a result of global warming.
The warming trend has also affected mountain areas, with the average temperature in mountainous areas rising by around 0.6˚C.
This has resulted in an increase of about 100m in the critical altitude for living animals compared with a century ago.
The weather bureau also confirmed what many residents have been saying: winters are not quite as cold as they used to be, and the rest of the year is getting warmer.
Over the past five decades, the number of days per year on which the mercury dropped below 10˚C fell by 19 days in mountainous areas, but only one day in low-lying areas.
However, the number of days on which the temperatures rose to more than 30˚C increased by 28 days per year in Taiwan proper, by 41 days in its outlying islands and by two days in mountainous areas.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater