Heat waves, drought, water shortages, fires plague Southern China

[NNadir]

BEIJING (Reuters) - The worst drought to hit southwest China in more than a century is spreading to neighbouring provinces with temperatures reaching record highs, state media said on Friday.

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The densely populated municipality of Chongqing and eastern parts of Sichuan province have been plagued by repeated heatwaves and have seen no significant rainfall since early July.

The drought is the worst since 1891 when meteorological records began in Chongqing, now hosting a population of 30 million, and had brought direct economic losses totaling 6.5 billion yuan ($817 million), Xinhua said.

Heat and drought had also hit the neighbouring province of Guizhou, the eastern provinces of Zhejiang, Anhui and Jiangxi, and the central provinces of Hunan and Hubei, Xinhua said.

Temperatures of up to 42.4 degrees Celsius (108.3 degrees Fahrenheit) were recorded in Chongqing on Thursday, after a high of 43.4 C on Wednesday.

Chongqing city, the industrial heart of the municipality with a population of 12 million, reported a record high of 44.5 C on August 16.

Some 18 million people have been short of drinking water and 11 million hectares of crops, mostly rice but including corn and tobacco, have been destroyed or damaged, Xinhua news agency said.

"The drought is a rarity in history in terms of the time it has lasted, its extent and the huge damage it has caused," Xinhua quoted the top drought relief official, Er Jingping, as saying.

No deaths have been reported.

More than 4,000 people have been fighting a forest blaze that had ravaged parched timber since Wednesday in the north of Chongqing, which reported 97 forest fires in August, Xinhua said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060901/sc_nm/weather_china_drought_dc_1

[mainegreen]

1. China change they're farming practices soon

or they're going to be all desert very soon.

[NNadir]

2. I'm not sure it's only about farming practices.

The droughts, heat waves, fires, etc, have been international. You can substitute the names for lots of countries in articles on these subjects.

Much of Oklahoma and Texas was on fire after experiencing droughts this winter, for instance, and their heat wave, now swept down the memory hole, was also dramatic.

My suspicion is that China's industrial policies which, like those of the US, involve coal, billions of tons of it, is more involved than their farming practices.

I do agree that much that goes on these days with farming - here as well as in China - is not sustainable.

[mainegreen]

3. True. But even given perfect weather and no Global Warming

China would still end up desert with they're current farming practices. Of course, we're going down that same route along with just about everyone else. Acid rain, pollution, drought etc are speeding up the process remarkably well though. If it wasn't so horrible it would be interesting to watch.
*sigh*
Topsoil is not eternal.

[NNadir]

4. What happens in many of these dust storms, going back to the 1930's

is that the top soil is deposited at sea.

China's dust storms are legion now, and I suspect ours may well be so too in the near future.

Of course, in the 1930's there were a few billion fewer people on the planet.