Drought forces ships using Panama Canal to carry less cargo
An intense drought related to this year’s El Nino weather phenomenon has precipitously lowered the level of Panama’s Gatun Lake, forcing the country’s Canal Authority to impose draft limits this week on ships moving through the waterway’s locks.
The restrictions on how deep the vessels can reach below the surface means large ships, primarily from the United States and China, must pass through with less cargo, which translates into lower revenue for the voyages.
It marks the fourth reduction in drafts imposed in the current dry season, which runs from January through April.
The driest period in memory for the canal basin is also hitting small indigenous villages that depend on tourism along the tributaries of the interoceanic passage.
The economic hit to canal operators stands to be minor, an estimated $15 million this year, compared with the $2.5 billion in revenue generated in 2018.
But the drought and the resulting restrictions highlight the difficulties Panama faces in satisfying increased demand for fresh water to feed the canal while irrigating fields and keeping the taps flowing in the capital as climate change threatens more extreme weather events.
“This year I do not think there will be problems with drinking water … due to the resources we have,” Steve Paton, who heads the longterm climate monitoring programme at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, said, referring to an accumulation of rainfall from the last rainy season.
“As for the future, it is difficult to forecast. But we are observing in the canal area that climatic events are becoming increasingly extreme.
“The biggest droughts and the eight or nine largest storms have occurred in the last 20 years, in the same way that 2014 to 2016 were the driest years in the canal’s history.”
El Nino is a recurring phenomenon in which warm ocean temperatures in the Pacific lead to drier than usual conditions in some areas and wetter in others.
Carlos Vargas, vice-president of environment and water for the Canal Authority, said recently that Gatun, one of the largest artificial lakes in the world with an area of 168 square miles, was 4.6 feet (1.4m) below normal levels for this time of year. It has dropped more than six inches (about 15cm) since early April. A smaller lake that also supplies the canal, Alajuela, was 7.2 feet (2.2m) below normal.
“These low levels in the Panama Canal are the product of four or five months of almost zero precipitation,” Mr Vargas said. “It really has been the driest dry season we’ve had in the history of the canal. The flow of rivers to the lake is down 60 per cent.”