Erratic monsoon keeps a parched Sri Lanka guessing

 

COLOMBO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Warm April weather is nothing new in Sri Lanka. Over generations, Sri Lankans have become accustomed to temperatures of up to 34 degrees Celsius during this month, when the sun moves directly overhead. They also know from experience that the baking heat will soon be eased by the arrival of the monsoon in May. But this once-predictable cycle is changing. Weather experts, government officials, farmers and ordinary people seem unsure as to what the monsoon season is likely to bring this year. http://www.trust.org/item/20140424080217-ofdz5/?source=hptop

Drought begins to bite in Sri Lanka

COLOMBO, 4 April 2014 (IRIN) – Sri Lanka has had six months of drought and could face severe crop losses and electricity shortages if the coming monsoon is as weak as forecasts predict, experts say.

“The situation is really, really bad,” said Ranjith Punyawardena, chief climatologist at the Department of Agriculture. “Already there are harvest losses and more are anticipated.”

According to Punyawardena, 5 percent (280,000 tons) of the 2014 rice harvest has already been lost due to the ongoing drought, which stretches back to November 2013. With 200,000 hectares of rice fields (20 percent of the annual cultivated total) planted during the secondary harvesting season already lost, experts say the losses from the drought could be exacerbated by the forecasted weak southwest monsoon, due in May.  http://www.irinnews.org/report/99884/drought-begins-to-bite-in-sri-lanka

 

Concerns growing over worsening food security in Sri Lanka – Thomson Reuters

 

Long-term interventions are essential to stem deteriorating food security among victims of frequent extreme weather events in Sri Lanka, experts warn.

In the last 20 months, parts of Sri Lanka have been hit by a severe drought and two bouts of floods that experts at the World Food Programme (WFP) and the government say have worsened the food security of victims.

In the last five years, according to UN estimates, between 3.5 million and 4 million people out of a population of little over 20 million have been affected by natural disasters in Sri Lanka – http://www.trust.org/item/20130917131123-k42lv/?source=hptop

Pashmina Withers on the Roof of the World

CHANGTHANG, India , Sep 5 2013 (IPS) – The famed pashmina shawl that keeps the cold away – in style and at a price – could itself have become the victim of winter. Thousands of goats whose fine wool is weaved into pashmina have perished in extreme cold being associated with climate change.

Pashmina is drawn from Changra goats found in Ladakh region of Kashmir state and a part of the Tibetan peninsula, more than 14,000 feet above sea level. The peninsula is often called the Roof of the World.

Little grows in these areas where the temperature can drop to minus 35 degrees Celsius. The local Changpa nomads live off their herds of sheep, yak and goats.

The Changthang region of the larger Tibetan Peninsula does not normally see heavy snowfall, though. That may now be changing, given the heavy snowfall earlier this year that deprived the Changpas of fodder for their animals.

“In the past five years this is the second time I have seen such heavy snowfall,” Bihkit Angmo, 53, who rears goats, told IPS outside her tent in Kharnak, a nomadic settlement 173 km east of Leh, the capital of Ladakh. “This new trend of snowfall several feet high has left us quite worried.”

More at: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/09/pashmina-withers-on-the-roof-of-the-world/

Kashmiri Farmers Unprepared for Drought

SRINAGAR, India, Aug 16 2013 (IPS) – Zareena Bano has had to skip school 17 times this year to help out on her family’s farm in Tangchekh village in the northern Indian state of Kashmir.

Her teachers say she has the potential to be a brilliant student, but warn that if she keeps missing school she will not go far.

Never before has the 15-year-old had to sacrifice her education in order to support her family, but an acute water crisis in this Himalayan state has made irrigation a constant worry and severely disrupted the way of life for thousands of farming families like her own.

Troubled though they are by the toll the extra labour is taking on their daughter’s schoolwork, Zareena’s parents are in no position to order her to stay away from the fields.

Her father, Gaffar Rathar, says the family is entirely dependent on the yields from his 2.5-acre paddy field and half a dozen walnut trees. Frequent droughts mean a lot of additional hard work for him and his family.

“Sometimes, when water is in extremely short supply, we have to store water in small ponds that we dug ourselves, and plastic containers,” he told IPS.

More at: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/08/kashmiri-farmers-unprepared-for-drought/

Climate change confuses Kashmir’s farmers

Faced with increasing frequency of droughts, and with irrigation facilities available to less than half the farms, rice farmers in Kashmir are wondering how to deal with water shortage.

More at:  http://www.thethirdpole.net/climate-change-confuses-kashmirs-farmers/

Ancient Kings Fight Climate Change – IPS

As erratic climate patterns take hold, researchers say that ancient  reservoirs built hundreds of years back, can serve to minimize flood waters and as receptacles for water during harsh droughts. http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/08/ancient-kings-fight-climate-change/

Pakistan wilts under record heat wave

A farmer transplants rice after previously planted seedlings were damaged by a blistering heat wave in May 2013, in Taxila, 23 km (14 miles) northwest of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital city. THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION/Saleem Shaikh

Saleem Shaikh
Thomson Reuters Foundation – Tue, 4 Jun 2013 12:15 PM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Zulekhan Mumtaz has seen her livelihood as a seller of camel milk turn sour because of a brutal heat wave that left Pakistan sweltering for three weeks in May with temperatures up to 51 degrees Celsius.

“My customers say they can no longer buy spoilt milk and squander their money,” the 31-year-old said, looking at the clotted yellow liquid.

“How can I buy fodder for the camel and food for my two children if the heat wave damages my milk?” she asked, resting with her animal in the shade of a tree in an upscale residential neighbourhood of Islamabad.

Pakistan in recent weeks has suffered its most severe heat wave in decades, with temperatures reaching as high as 51 degrees Celsius (124 Farenheit) on May 19 in Larkana, a city of two million people in southern Sindh province. This was the highest temperature for that month recorded there since 1998, when the mercury had peaked at almost 53 Celsius (127 Fahrenheit).

Lahore, Punjab province’s capital of about 15 million population, was the hottest city in the country on May 24 at 47.4 Celsius (117 Fahrenheit), hotter than any May since 1954.

Such extreme temperatures – which are becoming more common as a result of climate change – are an enormous health threat. They also make almost every function of daily life a nearly intolerable struggle – including, for millions, trying to earn a daily living.

The camel milk vendor Mumtaz, who lives in a shanty village on the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital, walks about four miles (6.5 km) daily to set up her roadside stall. Most of her customers are diabetes patients, among whom camel milk is very popular because it is a good source of insulin to help deal with the illness.

But “the heat wave has eroded my livelihood and made my camel sick because of frequent dehydration,” Mumtaz said, adding that the animal’s milk capacity had dropped by 70 percent. She sees her only remaining option as leaving the capital to return to her ancestral village.

Other livestock owners in Chak Shahzad, an area on the edge of the city popular with cattle farmers, report similar problems.

FEARS OF HUMAN, LIVESTOCK DEATHS

In the final week of May, Jamal Khan sold all 19 of his buffalos to a slaughterhouse in the city for about 2.1 million Pakistani rupees ($21,000), because his herd’s daily milk production had declined by 60 percent.

“I had no choice but to sell them, for fear of suffering heavy losses if they die of hyperthermia or repeated bouts of dehydration,” Khan said.

Deaths have not been limited to animals. Although officially confirmed figures of heat-related deaths are not available, local newspapers in Pakistan reported over a hundred deaths since early May.

Residents in most cities, towns and villages have been forced to stay indoors, leaving typically bustling shopping areas and business centres closed, and roads and highways deserted between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Left with limited options to cope with the heat, people have increased their consumption of cold beverages and fresh juices to try beat the sizzling heat and avoid dehydration and heat stroke.

Government hospitals across the country remained on emergency alert throughout much of the last month because of the heat wave.

“We have been advising the visiting patients (to increase) consumption of fresh water, juices, fruits and vegetables”, said Altaf Hussain, executive director of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital in Islamabad.

On May 27, rainfall finally brought a significant drop in temperatures to below 38 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) in the Pakistani provinces of Khyber-Pakhtunkhuwa, Gilgit-Baltistan, Punjab and Balochistan.

But the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) predicted dry and very hot weather across the plains of Sindh province, in the south of the country, for the first week of June. Temperatures in Islamabad have rebounded by 10 degrees to 40 Celsius  (104 Fahrenheit) since the end of the month.

According to a meteorological department advisory, the heat wave is unlikely to completely loosen its grip until the beginning of the first monsoon rains, expected in the first week of July.

Qamar-uz-Zaman, vice president for the Asia region at the World Meteorological Department, said that extreme summer temperatures, which have become common during the last few years in Pakistan, can largely be attributed to climatic warming.

CROP LOSSES

Data gleaned last year from 56 meteorological stations throughout Pakistan show a marked increase over recent years in the frequency of heat waves and rising temperatures particularly in the southern plains and coastal areas, according to Ghulam Rasul, a senior weather scientist at the meteorological department.

Reports of severe damage to cotton crops and paddy rice nurseries have come from around the country.

Ibrahim Mughal, chair of Agri Forum Pakistan, said in a phone interview that the heat wave had struck when cotton and rice sowing were at their peak.

“Farmers will have to quickly re-sow their cotton and paddy crops to avoid further harvest losses,” Mughal said.

Pervaiz Amir, an agro-economist and member of the government’s Task Force on Climate Change, said that the heat wave increased the evaporation rate by 20 to 25 percent compared to normal summers. He advised farmers to irrigate their crops more frequently, at least once or twice a week, and to adjust the timing of irrigation to early mornings and late evenings.

He also urged planting of shade and fruit trees along water channels, to cut evaporation of water.

Pakistan’s Environment Protection Agency warned that people in urban areas are at greater health risk from heat waves than those in rural parts of the country, in part because urban areas often absorb more heat.

Saleem Shaikh is climate change and development correspondent based in Islamabad.

Weblink: http://www.trust.org/item/20130604105605-6fcrq/