Water levels in China’s largest river and its two biggest freshwater lakes are at record lows as parts of the country’s south endure historic heatwaves and drought.
At Hankou, a key monitoring point on the Yangtze River in the central city of Wuhan, the water level had dropped to 17.54 meters on Saturday – about 6 meters lower than the average in recent years. It was also the lowest level seen for this time of year since records began in 1865, reports the South China Morning Post.
The Yangtze is the longest river in Asia and the third longest in the world. It stretches 6,300 km (3,900 miles) from the Tibetan Plateau in the west to the East China Sea near Shanghai – and the region is home to about one-third of China’s population.
Rainfall in the Yangtze river drainage area fell about 30 percent in July and is 60 percent lower than normal in August, with the river’s tributaries “significantly lower” than historical levels, according to the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission.
The Poyang lake in central China’s Jiangxi province, which plays a major role in regulating Yangtze water flows in the summer, has shrunk to levels normally seen during the winter dry season after a 50 percent decline in rain in July.
In a related weather event, heavy rain left streets flooded in the northwestern city of Xining on Saturday night. Heavy to torrential downpours were also forecast for the northeast from Sunday to Monday afternoon, with 10 to 18 centimeters (4 to 7 inches) expected in parts of Liaoning and Jilin provinces.
The summer of 2022 is on track to be the hottest
The National Meteorological Center says the summer of 2022 is set to be the hottest since Dhina began compiling complete meteorological records in 1961. The scorching heatwave is forecast to smother most parts of the country in the coming two weeks, triggering fresh concerns over drought, heat damage to crops, and new peaks in energy consumption, China’s weather authority said.
It said that in some areas, high temperatures could reach 40 C, possibly breaking records. Since Friday, the center has issued a red alert for extreme heat for three straight days.
“Since late July, there have been large-scale and high-intensity high temperatures in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River due to an abnormally strong subtropical high-pressure system in the western Pacific,” Chen Tao, chief forecaster at the National Meteorological Observatory said. “Based on our analysis, the system will continue and high temperatures will persist in those regions for the coming two weeks.”
In the sprawling southwestern municipality of Chongqing, facing its second hottest summer since records began in 1961, 900 missiles have been made available to try to “seed” clouds and induce rain, media reported.
China normally releases water from the Three Gorges reservoir to relieve drought on the Yangtze but downstream outflows are half the level of a year earlier, official data showed.
