- BBC Visual News Team
- （BBC Visual Journalism Team）
image source,Xinhua
Poyang Lake appears as a “tree of the earth” landscape due to drying up.
China’s longest river, the Yangtze River, is suffering an unprecedented drought due to month-long heat and record-low rainfall.
The water levels of lakes and tributaries have dropped, exposing the riverbed, even exposing the 600-year-old Buddhist stone carvings and reef pedestals of Guanyin Pavilion in Ezhou, Hubei Province.
The thousand-year-old stone island Luoxing Pier on Poyang Lake has completely emerged from the water nearly two months earlier than in previous years, and the surrounding riverbed has become a “prairie”.
image source,Xinhua
The Leshan Giant Buddha in Sichuan, located at the junction of three upstream tributaries of the Yangtze River, has its base exposed due to the falling water level.
The water level of the Yangtze River has dropped, making it difficult for hydropower stations to generate electricity. Some places have taken emergency measures to save electricity, including shutting down factories, shortening business hours in stores, and turning off air conditioners in office buildings to cope with the situation of high electricity demand and insufficient power supply capacity.
Among the big cities along the Yangtze River, Shanghai has turned off the famous landscape lights on the Bund and Pudong, and Luzhou, Sichuan has turned off street lights at different times to reduce the pressure on the power grid.
image source,AFP
Landscape lights on both sides of the Huangpu River in Shanghai were turned off to reduce power consumption.
According to China’s Ministry of Water Resources, summer rainfall on the Yangtze River was the lowest since records began in 1961. China’s National Climate Center also said that the intensity of this round of sustained heat waves has hit the strongest level since 1961.
The high temperature weather has reached its peak recently. The China Central Meteorological Observatory issued the highest high temperature red warning signal for six consecutive days from August 12 to 17.
A mountain fire broke out at the junction of Sichuan Province and Chongqing City. Among them, Chongqing was particularly affected by the disaster.
image source,China News Service
There have been wildfires in Nanchuan and Fuling in Chongqing recently.
Other provinces in the Yangtze River basin are also guarding against bushfires.
Last week, Chongqing’s Beibei district recorded a record-breaking 45 degrees Celsius.
Thirsty riverbeds, bottomless lakes
image source,Xinhua
In an area that relies on river water to irrigate farmland, lakes that rely on the Yangtze for water supply, such as Dongting Lake in Hunan, have shrunk dramatically.
According to local officials, the area of Poyang Lake in Jiangxi, China’s largest freshwater lake, has shrunk by 75 percent, and farmers around the lake have long relied on its fertile water for irrigation.
image source,China News Service
The sharp drop in water levels has also affected drinking water supplies. This forced the authorities to “release water” from the Three Gorges and Danjiangkou reservoirs, according to the official China Central Television.
This severe drought threatens the autumn harvest in the Yangtze River Basin. Thousands of acres of farmland in Sichuan alone have failed to harvest.
According to the current weather forecast, this round of extreme high temperatures will continue until the end of August.
image source,EPA
In Chongqing, people took advantage of the sharp drop in the water level of the Jialing River, and brought their children into the riverbed to play in the water to cool down. The Jialing River is one of the tributaries of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.
image source,Xinhua
A ranch in Jinhua, Zhejiang installed spray cooling facilities to cool the cows.
image source,China News Service
In the Longjing tea production area of West Lake in Hangzhou, some Longjing tea trees were sunburned and discolored.