Gatun Lake, the lake that allows the Panama Canal to operate, recorded the lowest water level ever recorded for the start of a dry season this year, meaning many fewer ships can pass through the canal. The extreme drought, exacerbated by El Niño, is likely to last until May.
The Panama Canal Authority has reduced daily traffic through the narrow corridor by almost 40 percent compared to last year.
Many ships have been diverted to longer sea routes, increasing both costs and carbon emissions, while global shipping company Maersk recently announced it would shift some of its cargo to rail.
Panama usually has a dry season from January to May, but Climate change has made rainfall patterns much less predictable.
Increasingly severe droughts and extreme floods can push canal infrastructure beyond its operational limits. The increase in temperatures also evaporates a significant amount of moisture from the reservoir and its basin.
The canal normally handles about 5 percent of maritime trade. But last summer, the authority began reducing traffic. Toll revenue has fallen $100 million a month since October.
Each maneuver requires around 190 million liters of the canal's reservoirs to raise and lower vessels through the locks before discharging them into the sea.
The demand for water has increased significantly. Panama's population has quadrupled since the 1950s, and more than half of the country depends on the canal's reservoirs—Lake Gatun and Alajuela—for drinking water.
The authority is considering a possible new reservoir on the Indio River, west of Gatun Lake. But an existing law prohibits the Authority from building reservoirs in watersheds beyond the one that feeds its existing lakes.
The authority has also considered Lake Bayano, but exploiting it would involve channeling water many kilometers away from a reservoir that also supplies hydroelectric power to Panama City.
Decades of deforestation have degraded the landscape's potential to absorb flood waters. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute has been working with the authority on forest restoration projects.
But it may not be enough to meet the demand for freight traffic through the channel.
“Everything that can be done within the basin will not be enough for the next 50 years,” said Gloria Arrocha Paz, a meteorologist with the authority.
By: MIRA ROJANASAKUL
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/7111549, IMPORTING DATE: 2024-02-12 22:18:03
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