Heavy rain, floods swamp south China

Days of heavy rain have swelled rivers and caused severe flooding across large parts of Guangdong province. On Tuesday, the Chinese government issued the highest storm warning for the affected area. The heavy rainfall began last week and is expected to continue over the next few days.

Tens of thousands of residents have evacuated the city of Qingyuan, north of Hong Kong, leaving their homes by boat and helicopter. In total, more than 110,000 people across the province were evacuated to safety. At least four have died and rescue workers are searching for 11 missing people, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Only one statue protrudes from the water in a flooded park in Qingyuan. Abundant rain is not uncommon in the region, but this year the rainfall was much heavier and began earlier in the season. In some places, measurements showed two to three times more rain than usual for this time of year.

Yin Zhijie, the chief hydrology forecaster at China's Water Resources Ministry, said "intensifying climate change" had raised the likelihood of the kind of heavy rain not typically seen until June or July. The downpour has also triggered landslides, injuring at least six people in the city of Jiangwan on Sunday.

Entire districts of Qingyuan, which lies on a branch of the Bei River, are under water. State media said the severe flooding was of the sort only "seen around once a century." Human-caused climate change means extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more intense. China is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

This cyclist took a moment to survey the destruction caused by the storm in Qingyuan. Flooding isn't the only problem: the Chinese weather service has warned of thunderstorms and strong winds in the coastal regions of the South China Sea in the coming days.

It's not just Qingyuan: the wider Pearl River estuary is home to major cities such as Hong Kong and Shenzhen, where "heavy to very heavy rainfall" was recorded on Tuesday. The Pearl River Delta is China's economic hub — with around 127 million inhabitants, it's one of the most densely populated regions in the country.

According to climate experts, the number of flooding events caused by rainfall and rising sea levels in China will increase significantly in the future, especially in the country's south. China has already been increasingly hit by severe flooding, devastating droughts and record heat waves in recent years.