Dry Spring Is Just a Preview, Serious Drought Is Yet to Come

  Dry Spring Is Just a Preview, Serious Drought Is Yet to Come

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

June 19, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

This spring, Taiwan experienced a rare drought; the monsoon which the public had been hoping would solve the problem unexpectedly did not materialize, Then, the public welcomed the southwesterly air currents that would bring precipitation from the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, and at the end of May, the Weather Bureau even once reported the possible attack of dual typhoons, yet unfortunately the hopes vanished. In early June, southwesterly air currents were forming and the Weather Bureau issued a warning over “catastrophic torrential rains.” However, against our wishes, the path moved more than one hundred kilometers southward than forecast, and the rainfall dropped in Kaohsiung, Pingtung, Taitung and on the seas, while reservoirs received limited inflows. After this wave of precipitation fronts moved northward, Taiwan will again be enveloped by the Pacific high pressure, continuing the bitter drought.

The seriousness of the spring drought can be known with a look at the statistics on the official website of the Weather Bureau. Without the wave of precipitation in May, the rainfall from January to April accounted for only 100 millimeters; this plus that of May was no more than 200 millimeters, far below the annual average. For an island country, water is a resource that is difficult to obtain externally. Although Premier Lai instructed the diversion of water to cope with the situation, water shortages are a regional phenomena happening everywhere; from where do we divert water?

Warming and extreme climate have exacerbated the degree of difficulty in weather forecasting. The high temperature records for the first ten days in May throughout the years, surprisingly, occurred five times in this century, escalating each time. In the past, the movement of precipitation in the northern hemisphere has had a certain rule of interaction with monsoons: in the Yellow Plum Season in May, low altitude precipitation moved upward to the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, and then hovered over South China and Taiwan; as a result, rainfall was so abundant as to make everything moldy. Unusually this year, it is just the reverse; low altitude precipitation did not move upwards, and there was no precipitation in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, resulting in a dry Yellow Plum Monsoon Season in Taiwan.

In order to cope with the problem of the economic “five shortages,” Premier Lai Ching-te last year proposed four strategies to solve the problem of “water shortages”; however, half a year has passed, is there any progress? A NT$ 250 billion program was budgeted under the "Forward-looking Water Environment," how much has been spent? The problem is that the drought exceeded expectations, and the time-consuming irrigation program has been moving at a snail’s pace; of course, it is not enough to meet the urgency. Including the development of hyporheic zones, no public tender has been issued for any of the engineering projects.

Conserving water is an indispensible way for Taiwan’s self-salvation. For a long time, Taiwan has been conceited in abundant and endless rainfall, squandering water resources; the mood of using water for the public agriculture, industry, and daily living leaves too much room for improvement, while we have been doing nothing. This is the most worrisome.

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