Record-breaking cold hits northern China

Temperatures in cities across northern China hit record lows on Wednesday, as authorities issued an alert for extreme cold across swathes of the country.

The national weather office said subzero temperatures smashed records at five stations in the provinces and regions of Shanxi, Hebei and Inner Mongolia in the early hours of Wednesday.

That included a drop to minus 33.2 degrees Celsius (minus 27.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in Shanxi's historic city of Datong and -27C in the nearby county of Yangqu.

In those areas, "notably, the records for all-time low temperatures had already been broken on December 17", the weather office said in a social media post.

The mercury also sank to a record -29.7C in Qingshuihe, Inner Mongolia; -23.3C in Baoding, Hebei; and -22C in Shunping, Hebei.

In Gansu province, where an earthquake late Monday caused the deaths of more than 130 people, groups of survivors spent a freezing Tuesday night huddled around outdoor fires.

Many of them had seen their homes destroyed or rendered unsafe by the magnitude-5.9 tremor, which struck remote villages near the provincial capital Lanzhou. 

Authorities on Wednesday issued a three-day alert for low temperatures across a vast area of northern, eastern and southeastern China.

The brutal cold follows a summer of record heat and devastating floods across the north of the country.

Experts warn that global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions makes extreme weather more likely.