Thailand in grip of drought

[anotheruser]

dont worry they will only waste a few BILLION ltrs over songkran.......... AGAIN, Thailand needs to understand it is not the wet Country it once was, Issan is becoming a desert

Except when it goes underwater.

[SantiSuk]

Up in the NE the sky is full of pollution and smoke from various forest fires set by farmers and the illegal loggers ... probably enhanced a bit from the southerly dry-season winds from China. It won't be long before Thailand is painting it's hillsides green, same same China did for the Olympic tourists, to pretend like there are still trees and grass growing here.

NE a very big place. No polluted skies here in Southern Sisaket. People tend to over-generalise from their micro-experience

[kimbathewhitelion]

OMG, must be Global Warming!! Run away!

Sorry no disrespect to the OP or others commenting here, just a previous Topic I engaged where it is & nothing but or be kicked.

Dry season will be good for the country as a wake up call for Thai tyrants, but bad news for the north with all the unchecked & free roaming crop fires.

Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

[canopy]

Don't understand how Thailand is flooded half the year and in drought the other half. You would have thought they would have figured out a way to manage and save those flood waters for the dry months.

One contributing factor is the amount of water being used year over year is rising quickly because the population is increasing and so is farming. Economic downturns exacerbate the problem because when jobs disappear in the big cities the people go back to the provinces using more water for themselves and farm more. Reservoirs that used to be big enough don't go far enough anymore. They are constantly building and expanding them, but never enough.

Another contributing factor is the flood year is still fresh in peoples minds. Dam operators are scared to let their capacities get too high otherwise great rains could overflow and contribute to flooding downstream. So what happens is they bleed off too much water based on rain forecasts that never come and end up with little water at the end of the rainy season because their recent focus is avoiding floods rather than handling droughts.

[RPCVguy]

One contributing factor is the amount of water being used year over year is rising quickly because the population is increasing and so is farming. Economic downturns exacerbate the problem because when jobs disappear in the big cities the people go back to the provinces using more water for themselves and farm more. Reservoirs that used to be big enough don't go far enough anymore. They are constantly building and expanding them, but never enough.

Another contributing factor is the flood year is still fresh in peoples minds. Dam operators are scared to let their capacities get too high otherwise great rains could overflow and contribute to flooding downstream. So what happens is they bleed off too much water based on rain forecasts that never come and end up with little water at the end of the rainy season because their recent focus is avoiding floods rather than handling droughts.

Good points - each, especially the growth in population which most people ignore mentioning - in any nation.

This story about the El Nino admits it is still an early forecast, but a monster El Nino just might shake up the worlds weather for awhile.

"The pool of 4-6+ degree Celsius above average temperatures continues to widen and lengthen, now covering 85 degrees of longitude from 170 East to 105 West. Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that the zone of extreme 6+ C temperature anomalies has both widened and extended, covering about 50 degrees of longitude and swelling to a relative depth of about 30-40 meters. This is an extraordinarily intense temperature extreme that well exceeds those observed during the ramp-up to the record 1997-98 El Nino event."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/08/1290498/-Break-Out-Your-Sun-Tan-Lotion-Monster-El-Nino-Forming-In-The-Pacific?detail=email

The real answer of mitigating between drought and floods is to have mature and extensive forests to break the force of rains, soak it into the hills and replenish aquifers. On that account it is late, but not yet too late. The research on which trees to plant first to optimize restoration of forests has been done.

http://www.forru.org/th/intro.php

Of course, that would also require protecting the forest from another round of cutting due to the pressures of a population not taught as to what has happened to lands like Lebanon and Babylon as similar latitudes cut their forests.

Long term, the northern sections of Thailand are on the boundary between regions forecast to get wetter and those forecast to get drier as the planet warms. The southern regions are set to get wetter, but the northern regions are likely going to vacillate between dry years and wet.

Will the Wet Get Wetter and the Dry Drier? - YouTube

[Scarpolo]

so this article stated that in 20 days there will be no water,

did any water come?