One of the government's solutions has been a "sponge city" programme which began in 2014. Horton also said that some of the country's big lakes have been drastically reduced in size. Urban sprawl has covered more and more land in impermeable concrete - increasing the risk of rapid water buildup on the surface during heavy rain with nowhere to drain into.
The country's rapid development and breakneck urbanisation has also exacerbated flooding. Li Shuo, a climate analyst for Greenpeace East Asia, told AFP that the floods "ring an alarm bell for China that climate change is here." Meanwhile Zhengzhou, at the centre of this week's torrential downpours, saw an average year's worth of rain in just three days, officials said. Water levels reached historic highs in 53 rivers during China's summer last year, according to China's ministry of water resources, as authorities warned the Three Gorges Dam is facing the largest flood peak since it began operating in 2003. The burden on China's dams is likely to grow as climate change makes extreme weather events more common.Īs the Earth's atmosphere gets warmer, it holds more moisture, making downpours more intense, Benjamin Horton, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore, told AFP. The center said on Sunday that southwestern Guangdong province was forecast to experience short-but-heavy downpours from 2 pm Sunday to 8 am Monday, with maximum hourly precipitation of around 50 mm.Last year, authorities in eastern Anhui province were forced to blow up two dams to release water from the rising Chuhe river over cropland.Īnd fears re-emerge periodically over the structural integrity of the Three Gorges Dam on the upper Yangtze, the world's largest hydroelectric dam, built in an area criss-crossed by geological faultlines. It then renewed the blue alert on Friday, warning that a vast stretch of southern China will suffer from severe convective weather events from Friday to Monday.Ĭhina has a four-tier, color-coded weather alert system, with red representing the most severe warning, followed by orange, yellow and blue. Small in size and sometimes only covering 10 kilometers, severe convective weather events can produce intense precipitation.Īt 10 am on Wednesday, the National Meteorological Center issued its first alert for a destructive weather event this year. The alerts issued by the national meteorological authority for severe convective weather, which refers to sudden and destructive weather phenomenon that includes thunderstorms, hail, gales and heavy downpours, suggests a difficult flood control situation this season. "Starting on Friday, the ministry will arrange for officials to remain on duty around the clock," the release said, adding that river basin management authorities and local water resource departments should all adopt a flood control footing. Local authorities should provide faster forecasts and early warnings, and run more simulations, as well as draft contingency plans to ensure the safety of lives and property. The ministry called for increased measures to guard against flooding in small rivers and mountainous areas, and for enhancing flood control for small- and medium-sized reservoirs. The area between the Yangtze and Huaihe rivers and the region to the south of the Yangtze may also suffer from periodic drought.
Heavier floods may hit the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and the basins of the Haihe, Songhua, Liaohe and Pearl rivers. This shows that China's flood season began on Friday, eight days earlier than usual, it continued.įorecasts indicate that the country will suffer from frequent flooding and droughts this year, with some regions experiencing more severe instances compared to normal, it said. About 370,000 square kilometers of the South have already experienced more than 50 millimeters of rain a day for three days, the ministry said in a media release on Friday, adding that the largest single daily amount was 194 mm. Warnings were issued on Friday following heavy rainfall that began on Tuesday. The Ministry of Water Resources has urged local authorities in southern parts of the country to take preventive measures against heavy rains, as the annual flood season has begun with short, local downpours. Rescuers enter a village to evacuate stranded people in flood water in Dexing, East China's Jiangxi province, June 20, 2022.
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