Since July, most of the Yangtze River Basin has continued to experience high temperatures and little rainfall, with rainfall 4.5% lower than the same period of the previous year.
In the next few days, the drought in the Yangtze River Basin will continue.
The latest data released by the Ministry of Water Resources shows that since the beginning of this year, due to the influence of the Western Pacific subtropical high, the inflow of water from major rivers and lakes in the Yangtze River Basin has been significantly lower, and the water level has been significantly lower, resulting in drought disasters rarely seen in the same period for many years.
Up to now, 9 provinces (cities) including Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui and Jiangxi have been affected by drought with an area of 32.99 million mu of cultivated land, and 2.46 million people and 350,000 large livestock have been affected by the drought.
Yang Guang, Director of the Drought Relief Department of the Flood and Drought Disaster Prevention Department of the Ministry of Water Resources: Due to the early planning of the water conservancy department and the preemptive efforts to store water in reservoirs, in the case of severe meteorological drought, the current total amount of reservoir water storage in drought-stricken provinces and cities in the Yangtze River Basin is the same as that of the perennial year. It was basically the same over the same period, and water was reserved for drought relief.
In view of the situation of the continuous development of drought, especially the current autumn crops such as rice are in a critical period of growth and require large amounts of water, the Ministry of Water Resources has started to implement the "Special Action for Joint Dispatching of Reservoir Groups in the Yangtze River Basin for Drought Relief and Water Supply" since August 16. The reservoirs in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, Dongting Lake reservoirs and Poyang Lake reservoirs with the Three Gorges as the core have accumulatively supplied 980 million cubic meters of water to the lower reaches.
Hu Jianwei, chief hydrology forecaster of the Ministry of Water Resources: It is expected (in the next few days) that the precipitation and water inflow in the Yangtze River Basin will still be low, and the drought will continue.
In the later period, with the arrival of the autumn rain in Western China, the drought situation in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River will gradually ease, but the drought situation in the middle and lower reaches of Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and other places is still not optimistic.
(CCTV reporter Chen Bo Zhouwei Wei Yuxiang Xue Jianqi)