Experts: drought in Sichuan unrelated to "Three Gorges Project"

Why has Sichuan been suffering from drought for two continuous years? On June 14th, an interview with researcher Ma Zhenfeng, director of the Sichuan weather center, and senior engineer, Chen Wenxiu, was conducted. The experts said that the drought damage of recent years in Sichuan province is obviously more severe than it was in former years. Global warming has caused the drought and it has nothing to do with the storage of water by the "Three Gorges" Project (TGP).

Experts announced that from the beginning of this year, the shortage in average precipitation in Sichuan province is not very serious. However, it is unevenly distributed, and thus has led to a large area of drought in spring and summer. Last year, the high temperatures and drought reduced soil moisture by a large margin. The warm winter quickened the evaporation of surface water, river water and reserves of water storage are much less than in former years. All of these are causes of drought. Furthermore, higher temperatures and longer daylight hours further aggravate drought.

Experts think that the continuous drought in Sichuan province is not an isolated event, but is rather the specific expression of increasing and enhanced extreme weather conditions created by global warming. The temperature changes in Sichuan and in the whole of China are not showing any differences, and China's temperature changes are basically consistent with average global trends of change, and the rate of warming has reached an increase of 0.74 Celsius per 100 years. This indicates that the weather and climate change in Sichuan is closely related to global warming.

Is Sichuan drought interrelated with the Three Gorges project's water storage? In regards to this, experts think that the continuous drought in Sichuan Province is not directly related to the Three Gorges project. The water storage areas and the evaporation of the Three Gorges Reservoir play an extremely minor role in the global climate system. The Three Gorges project simply affects the small climate near the Three Gorges; it is impossible to influence the upper reaches of atmospheric circumfluence aberrance, and has nothing to do directly with droughts and floods in Sichuan basin. At several points in history, before the Three Gorges Dam was built, continuous periods of drought had occurred in Sichuan. For example, between 1924 and 1925, and between 1936 and 1937, Sichuan experienced serious drought continuously for years.

By People's Daily Online