EXTREME temperatures are becoming more frequent in cities across East Asia, according to new analysis Greenpeace released today.

The study analysed temperature data in 57 cities across China, the Koreas and Japan and found that hot weather was arriving earlier in the year in more than 80 per cent of them.

Between 2001-2020, the first hot day of the year (30°C or higher) arrived on average 11 days earlier than the two previous decades in Tokyo and Seoul.

The first hot day arrived 12 days earlier in Shanghai and, worryingly, 23 days earlier in Sapporo in Japan’s north.

“Over the past two weeks we have seen multiple Olympic athletes collapse due to heat stroke,” Greenpeace East Asia climate urgency project manager Mi-kyoung Kim said.

“Earlier this summer, extreme temperatures in Guangdong, China, forced factories to shut down, and in [South] Korea hundreds of thousands of livestock were reported dead due to heat waves.

“These extreme heat events are consistent with the region’s changing climate. Dangerous temperatures will only become more frequent unless governments switch from polluting fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources, including wind and solar.”

Meanwhile, in Greece — where temperatures reached 45°C earlier this week — forest fires fuelled by the country’s worst heatwave since 1987 threatened the birthplace of the Olympics.

There are more than 100 fires tearing across Greece, the authorities said today. One of them was closing in on Olympia, where the games were held from 776BC for hundreds of years, before it was held back.

Citizens Protection Minister Michalis Chrisochoidis said earlier that firefighters waged “an all-night battle” to save the site.

“We will continue the battle all day in order to contain all the fronts and extinguish the fire. The conditions are difficult,” Mr Chrisochoidis said.