China issues first national drought alert, battles to save crops in extreme heatwave

Agencies | Shanghai

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

China has issued its first national drought alert of the year as authorities battle forest fires and mobilise specialist teams to protect crops from scorching temperatures across the Yangtze river basin. The national ‘yellow alert’, issued late on Thursday, comes after regions from Sichuan in the southwest to Shanghai in the Yangtze delta have experienced weeks of extreme heat, with government officials repeatedly citing global climate change as the cause.

The alert is two notches short of the most serious warning on Beijing’s scale. In one of the Yangtze’s important flood basins in central China’s Jiangxi province, the Poyang Lake has now shrunk to a quarter of its normal size for this time of year, state news agency Xinhua said on Thursday.

As many as 66 rivers across 34 counties in the southwestern region of Chongqing have dried up, state broadcaster CCTV said yesterday. Rainfall in Chongqing this year is down 60% compared to the seasonal norm, and the soil in several districts is severely short of moisture, CCTV said, citing local government data.