The observational temperature data(July-August,JA)from 1961 to 2004 in East China have been used to analyze the interannual variations of regional summer temperature anomalies related to the hot summer events in the present article,and the descending trend of the summer temperature has been found.Three criterions for defining hot summers have been set up,and 10 hot summers in the recent 44 years have been indentified.The JA mean temperature field in East China can be divided into three subdivisions with the rotated empirical orthogonal function(REOF) method.The analyses of the climatic catastrophic features as well as periodicities for each subdivision show that there are no significant temperature changes in these subdivisions except the northern subdivision where summer temperature has obviously increased in the 21st century.The periods of both 2 yrs and 3-4 yrs are found to dominate in any one of the three subdivisions.