Hong Kong's Winters may vanish in 50 Years

Hong Kong's winters could vanish within 50 years, with the number of cold days declining virtually to zero due to global warming and urbanisation, the head of the city's weather observatory warned on Friday.

Cold days are defined as those with temperatures below 12 degrees Celsius (53.6 degrees Fahrenheit) at some point during the day.

Despite its sweltering summers, the former British colony enjoys a sub-tropical climate, with cool winter temperatures and hoar frost sometimes found on its highest peak of Tai Mo Shan.

Between 1961 and 1990, there was an average of 21 cold days every winter but this figure had already halved by 2000. Over the past century, temperatures in Hong Kong rose around 1.2 degrees, almost double the global average.

The number of summer "hot-nights" in Hong Kong, with temperatures above 28 degrees Celsius, has already jumped to 30 a year, an almost four-fold increase from the 1990s. This is mainly due to the heat trapped during the day by the concrete city and its teeming skyscrapers is unable to dissipate fully at night.