What is the current situation of the risk of heat, drought, and saltwater intrusion in Vietnam? What is the El Nino Solution?
What is the El Nino phenomenon?
- El Nino phenomenon is used to refer to anomalous warming of the surface seawater in the central equatorial region and the Eastern Pacific Ocean, usually lasting from 8 to 12 months, or longer. Normally, the El Nino phenomenon will appear once every 3-4 years, but sometimes it is thicker or less frequent.
- Thus, from the above concept, the El Nino phenomenon is understood as:
Result of the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean.
+ Mainly atmospheric circulation with sea surface temperature in the equatorial Pacific.
A change on one side causes a reaction on the other side.
+ El Nino is not a local phenomenon in the waters off the coast of South America, but is part of a complex, large-scale interaction system between the atmosphere and the ocean.
+ El Nino is part of the climate apparatus in the tropics that is involved in many world weather phenomena
+ The El Nino phenomenon is a manifestation of fluctuations in the mechanism of the global climate.
- According to the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, El Nino is likely to appear in late June, early June and may last until early 2024. Vietnam needs to implement drastic measures to prevent and combat drought, water shortage, and saltwater intrusion, so as not to lack water for daily life, hydropower and production, especially in critical areas.
- According to the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting in the El Niño forecast bulletin from May 15, El Nino is likely to appear in late May and early June 2023 with a probability of about 70-80% and can last until early 2024. El Nino's influence often causes a shortage of rainfall in most regions of the country, common from 25-50%.
- A number of meteorological agencies in the world such as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the US Climate Prediction Center (NOAA), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) ... have made the same comment. El Nino appears from the middle months of 2023; In which, NOAA believes that there is a 90% chance that El Nino will continue to last until 2024 in the Northern Hemisphere.
- With the assessment of impacts on meteorology and hydrology of El Nino phenomenon and storage capacity of current irrigation and hydropower reservoirs, drought, water shortage, and saltwater intrusion are likely to occur. localized during the dry season of 2023 in some provinces in the Central region and the risk of occurrence is at a high level (level 3-4), on a wide scale, lasting in some regions across the country, especially in the Central Highlands, Mekong River Delta, Central and Southeast regions from the dry season from 2024 to 2025.
What is the current situation of the risk of heat, drought, and saltwater intrusion in Vietnam? What is the El Nino Solution?
What is the El Nino Solution?
In fact, climate change makes the El Nino phenomenon appear with more and more frequency, which will become a big challenge for all countries in the world. Forcing us to take measures to limit the impact of this phenomenon:
- Exploit all the potential of human civilization to forecast the exact time of appearance, predict the path and the destructive power.
- Do not do jobs that help El Nino such as deforestation, release carbon dioxide into the air, because El Nino is stronger if the ground lacks trees or a greenhouse phenomenon occurs.
- Prepare the minimum conditions for living with El Nino, such as building a floating house to avoid floods (for flood areas) or storing water (for dry areas)...
What is the current situation of risk of heat, drought and saltwater intrusion in Vietnam?
At Official Telegram No. 397/CD-TTg in 2023 on proactively implementing urgent measures to cope with the risks of heat, drought, water shortage, and saltwater intrusion, said:
- According to the report of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, from the beginning of the year until now, the total rainfall across the country is common at lower levels than the average of many years; currently, the water level in many large reservoirs is very low; In some large reservoirs, the amount of water stored in reservoirs is short of tens to hundreds of millions of m3, especially Ban Ve lake (Nghe An) lacks up to 389 million m3.
- The UK Meteorological Agency predicts 2023 to be one of the hottest years on record. With the shortage of water sources at large reservoirs, and the high probability of El Nino phenomenon in the second half of 2023, the risk of severe heat, drought and water shortage in the coming time, especially in the Central, Central Highlands and Southeast regions.
- Faced with the above situation, the Prime Minister requested the Ministers and Chairman of the People's Committees of the provinces and cities to proactively direct and drastically implement urgent solutions to prevent and control drought, water shortage, saltwater intrusion, not to lack water for daily life, hydropower and production, especially for key areas, focus on a number of key solutions.
Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nhung