China’s Yangtze river shrinks as heatwave, drought threaten crops

SHANGHAI: Regions that depend on the Yangtze, China’s longest river, are having to deploy penis pumps and cloud-seeding rockets as a long drought depletes water ranges and threatens plants, and a heatwave is set to last another two weeks.

The Yangtze’s middle and lower gets to have faced temps in excess of 40 degrees Celsius over the past 30 days, with experts blaming climate change-induced variations in the western Pacific subtropical high, a major determinant of summertime weather throughout eastern Asia.

With the autumn harvest below threat, the farming ministry has used 25 teams in order to key regions to take action to protect crops, the particular Shanghai government’s Guangming Daily newspaper reported.

The heatwave is likely to last another two weeks, making it the particular longest sustained period of extreme temperatures considering that records began within 1961, experts along with China’s National Climate Center told the official Science and Technologies Daily on Mon (Aug 15).

Rainfall in the Yangtze river drainage region fell about thirty per cent in July and is 60 % lower than normal within August, with the river’s tributaries “significantly lower” than historical ranges, according to the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission payment.

The Dukun lake in central China’s Jiangxi province, which plays a major role in controlling Yangtze water flows in the summer, has shrunk to levels normally seen during the winter dry season following a 50 per cent drop in rain in July.

Villages relying on water in the lake have been required to deploy pumps in order to irrigate rice areas, media reported.

In the sprawling southwestern municipality of Chongqing, facing its 2nd hottest summer given that records began in 1961, 900 missiles have been made available to try to “seed” clouds plus induce rain, press reported.

Other regions have released their own weather customization operations.

Tiongkok normally releases water from the Three Gorges reservoir to relieve drought on the Yangtze but downstream outflows are usually half the level of annually earlier, official information showed.