China is suffering from the worst drought in over 60 years.
Chongqing has experienced an unprecedented heat wave for nearly three months, with the highest daytime temperature reaching 45 degrees Celsius, while the rainfall is less than half of that of the previous year, resulting in severe drought damage.
This year's heatwave and drought in China are the longest-lasting and most damaging since 1961, when meteorological observations began.
The water level of the Yangtze River, called the 'lifeline of the continent', recorded the lowest level in 157 years since the water level was first observed in 1865, and the area of Lake Poyang, the largest freshwater lake in China, has also shrunk by four-fifths from 3,500 square kilometers to 737 square kilometers. I did.
2.46 million residents of nine provinces are suffering from water shortages, and damage to 2.15 million hectares of crops has caused an emergency to harvest crops this fall.
Sichuan Province, which relies on Yangtze River hydroelectric power for 80% of its electricity, lacks electricity, causing power outages to the point that even street traffic lights are turned off, and major production facilities have also stopped operating.
China's meteorological authorities have predicted that the heat wave will subside by next week, but it has not been able to predict when the drought will end.
To make matters worse.
Even fear of a major earthquake is spreading in China.
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"After a great drought, a great earthquake will come"... Spread of 'Hanjin Theory'
"After a great drought comes a great earthquake."
This is a hypothesis that has been spreading rapidly through Chinese social media recently.
This is the so-called 'Hanjin theory'.
This theory is also listed in China's largest portal, Baidu Encyclopedia.
According to Baidu Encyclopedia, this theory was created by a man named Geng Qingguo in 1972. After graduating from the Department of Earthquakes at the China University of Science and Technology, Geng Qingguo served as the first director of the Beijing Guanzhuang Earthquake Prediction Prediction Station.
His theory, in a nutshell, is that 'a great earthquake always comes after a great drought'.
The epicenter of earthquakes with a magnitude of 6.0 or higher was mostly dry areas that had suffered a drought 1-3 years before the earthquake, and the longer the drought, the larger the magnitude of the earthquake.
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Geng Qingguo proposed the 'geothermal origin theory' and the 'unstellar effect origin theory' as the basis for the theory.
The 'geothermal origin theory' is a hypothesis that the active activity of underground magma causes a drought in the area due to the increase in temperature.
That is why earthquakes come after drought.
The 'cloud effect origin theory' is a hypothesis that radon gas is released when surface stress is accumulated to form seismic clouds, and this radon gas reduces rainfall and causes local drought.
In other words, the radon gas released before the earthquake caused by fault activity causes drought, which also shows a correlation between drought and earthquakes, says Geng Qingguo.
He predicted the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed 240,000 people with this theory, and the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (the Sichuan earthquake) in which 86,000 people were killed or missing, the Baidu Encyclopedia stated.
He explained that before these two earthquakes, there was actually a major drought in the area.
"There is an 84.8% chance of a major earthquake occurring within three years after a major drought"
Since the recent drought in China has been so severe, the number of Chinese who are concerned about an earthquake based on this theory is increasing significantly.
The earthquake with a magnitude of 3.9 on the 25th in Luzhou City, Sichuan Province, which is suffering from severe drought, also fueled these concerns.
Posts on Chinese social media saying, 'Is there really a big earthquake after a great drought?', 'before an earthquake occurs, a lot of heat energy is released underground, causing abnormal weather' The logic of accelerating the activity of the fault zone by changing
Cases of previous droughts in China's past earthquakes are flooding social media.
Citing the specific contents of the 'Hanjin Theory', there is also a report that the probability of a major earthquake occurring within three years after a major drought reaches 84.8%.
On the afternoon of the 26th, 'Does a big earthquake necessarily occur after a great drought?
Can you believe it?' has also made it to the top of Baidu search rankings.
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After the state-run media evolve... "There is no causal relationship between drought and earthquake"
Chinese state-run media hastened to evolve.
Drought and earthquake data may be consistent to some extent, but that does not imply a causal relationship.
Furthermore, the Internet media Pengpai refuted the 'Hanjin Theory' piece by piece.
First, in the Hanjin Theory, the correlation range between the dry area where the drought occurred and the area where an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 or greater occurred was defined as 252,000 km2, which is too wide, Peng Pai pointed out.
He said it was equivalent to the area of Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang combined.
According to this theory, even if an earthquake occurs 283 km away after a major drought in a city, the logic is proven.
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The condition of '1 to 3 years after the drought' was also taken into consideration.
According to Peng Pai, Wenchuan, Sichuan Province, which was hit by the 2008 earthquake, experienced several major droughts in 114 years from 1900 to 2013.
If the condition of 'three years after the drought' is applied, 58 out of 114 years fall into this category, Peng Pai pointed out.
According to the Hanjin theory, even if an earthquake occurred, it should have occurred several more times.
According to Pengpai's own tally, there were 142 earthquakes with a magnitude of 6.0 or greater in mainland China from 1900 to 2013, of which 79 were drought-related 1-4 years ago, or only about half of them.
At least not 84%.
As the controversy spread, China's Earthquake Bureau issued an official position saying, "There is no inevitable causal relationship between earthquakes and drought. The occurrence of earthquakes is not dependent on drought."
The 1.4 billion people on the continent are shaking in the unprecedented climate that is hard to find.