Southern Taiwan may see annual drought due to climate change

Leader of the research team Chou Chia, a researcher at the Research Center for Environmental Changes under Academia Sinica, issued the warning at a press conference organized by the Cabinet-level National Science Council (NSC).

Chou said that the polarized change in global weather will make Taiwan suffer floods in the rainy season and labor under drought in the dry season. “If the government fails to actively improve water resources management,” Chou said.

Chou said although Taiwan's average annual rainfall has stood at a high level of 2,600 millimeters, the rainfall distribution on the island has become increasingly uneven between the dry and wet seasons, translating to what he describes as a worrisome “rich-get-richer” rainfall pattern.

He continued that the situation is especially prominent in southern Taiwan, where the range of precipitation between the dry and wet seasons has shifted by 15 percent over the past 30 years.

In central and southern Taiwan, the rainy season usually runs from the start of the plum rain season in April or May to the end of typhoon season in October or November, with water storage levels in reservoirs currently only sufficient to hold six months of necessary water supplies needed each year. “If the year's last typhoon goes away in September and the next year's plum rain season doesn't come until the end of May, then the extension of the dry season will lead to a storage problem with the water supply, according to Chou.

He said the above-mentioned undesirable phenomenon is not just a presumptive situation, but is very likely to become a reality. “But for the heavy rainfall brought to the southern Kaohsiung area by Typhoon Morakot in 2009, the rainfall in the area that year was only half that registered in the preceding years,” Chou noted.

Should the trend continue, southern Taiwan's Kaohsiung area will likely see its long dry season contribute less than 20 percent of the city's annual precipitation on average in the next 30 years. That means severe droughts, as well as floods, will occur more frequently.

As a result, Chou and his team urged the government to re-evaluate how the nation collects and stores water.

“Taiwan is especially prone to the threat of rainfall changes associated with climate change because its terrain is relatively steep,” Chou said. This makes water retention more difficult during extreme rainfall events.

He also said the government should look into better ways for irrigating crops, because agriculture puts a heavy demand on water usage every year.

Also yesterday, Economics Minister Shih Yen-hsiang said at a legislative session that the Water Resources Agency under his ministry has held talks with the Central Weather Bureau about creating artificial rain under proper meteorological conditions, in order to counter the water depletion.

Shih also noted that if the drought lingers, the government will enforce a water rationing system in several stages.

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