China issued first national drought alert this year as several regions experienced weeks of extreme heat

 

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China has issued its first national drought alert of the year as authorities battle forest fires and mobilise specialist teams to protect crops from extreme heat across the Yangtze river basin.

The national ‘yellow alert’ comes after regions from Southwest China’s Sichuan province to Shanghai in the Yangtze delta have experienced weeks of extreme heat. The alert is two notches short of the most serious warning.

In Jiangxi province, the Poyang Lake has shrunk to a quarter of its normal size for this time of year, as many as 66 rivers across 34 counties in the southwestern region of Chongqing have dried up, and rainfall in Chongqing this year is down 60% from the seasonal norm, state media reported.

China’s National Meteorological Center (NMC) renewed its high-temperature red alert on Friday, the 30th consecutive day it has issued alerts, it said on its Weibo channel.

State forecasters also predicted that the current heatwave would only start to abate on Aug. 26.

China’s high temperatures in July caused direct economic losses of 2.73 billion yuan ($400 million), affecting 5.5 million people, according to data from China’s emergency ministry.