A severe drought has dented energy supplies and disrupted access to water for hundreds of thousands. Cities order rolling blackouts; farmers rush to save crops.
A severe drought has dented energy supplies and disrupted access to water for hundreds of thousands. Cities order rolling blackouts; farmers rush to save crops.
Faced with China’s most searing heat wave in six decades, factories in the country’s southwest are being forced to close. A severe drought has shrunk rivers, disrupting the region’s supply of water and hydropower and prompting officials to limit electricity to businesses and homes. In two cities, office buildings were ordered to shut off the air-conditioning to spare an overextended electrical grid, while elsewhere in southern China local governments urged residents and businesses to conserve energy.
Now China is also facing an intense heat wave that has swept across the country for more than two months, from central Sichuan Province to coastal Jiangsu, with temperatures often exceeding 40 Celsius, or 104 Fahrenheit. In the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, the mercury rose to 113 degrees on Thursday, prompting the government to issue its highest heat warning for the eighth time this summer. The country has recorded an average of 12 days of high temperatures this summer, about five days more than usual, and the heat wave is forecast to persist for at least another week, according to statistics from the official China Meteorological Center.
The intense heat is expected to significantly reduce the size of China’s rice harvest because it has caused long periods of drought, drying up rice paddies that are irrigated by rain, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
The intense weather is affecting other agriculture as well. In the eastern city of Hangzhou, tea farmers preparing for the fall harvest have covered their crops with nets in an effort to shield them from the scorching heat.
“It has an effect on both the physics and the psychology,” she said.
Humans were not the only ones oppressed by the heat. Pandas in zoos lay on sheets of melting ice. Pigs being transported by truck in the southwestern city of Chongqing became dehydrated, prompting firefighters to hose them down. Chickens rejected their feed and struggled to lay eggs in the heat, causing the egg prices to surge across the country, according to state media reports.
Li Xinyi, the owner of a chicken farm in the eastern city of Hefei, told a local news site that he had installed a large fan in his henhouse that he said could keep temperatures from exceeding 88 Fahrenheit, but said he was still getting fewer eggs than usual. Another farmer, in the central province of Henan, told a state news outlet that about 20 percent of his hens were refusing to lay eggs.
In Chongqing, a sprawling metropolis in southwestern China with around 20 million people, the heat has been compounded by a severe drought, parching 51 rivers and 24 reservoirs and disrupting the water supply of more than 300,000 residents. Several other provinces are also experiencing droughts that are expected to worsen in the coming weeks.
To conserve energy, subway stations and trains in Sichuan’s provincial capital, Chengdu, turned off overhead lights to conserve energy, while office buildings there as well as in Dazhou, a neighboring city, were asked to stop using air-conditioning. The province also issued an order to factories to suspend operations from Aug. 15 to 20, and Toyota and Foxconn, a supplier for Apple, were among companies that confirmed that their factories would comply.
“Everyone, from individuals to city governors and developers, should prepare for the new norm of extremes and be aware that those new extreme events can be dangerous,” he said.
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