![]() ![]() Across the region some countries have asked farmers to prioritise water supplies, told industrial estates to increase their ability to store rainwater, and introduced restrictions on electricity usage. Malaysia is not the only country getting ready. “At this stage we don’t have an indication as to whether the developing El Niño will be as strong as that, but it is obviously taking place against a backdrop of rising temperatures,” Ms Nullis said. “The El Niño in 2015/2016 was exceptionally strong,” Clare Nullis, a spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organization, a UN agency, told the Telegraph – and that was without the temperatures rising to levels not seen in the modern record-keeping era last week. Meanwhile in 2019, a moderate year, devastating forest fires and haze linked to the dry weather cost Indonesia alone an estimated $5.2 billion, according to the World Bank. It affected more than 70 per cent of the land area and 325 million, according to the UN, and caused “devastating” disruption to livelihoods, food security and health. In 2015, a particularly bad El Niño year, the phenomenon contributed to one of the worst droughts in two decades across southeast Asia. Governments are increasingly concerned about the potential ramifications – including reduced agricultural yields, forest fires, dwindling water supplies and strained power grids as people ramp up their air conditioning to stay cool. In southeast Asia, the pattern is associated with reduced rainfall and soaring temperatures. This drives surface air temperatures and pressure to change throughout the equator, which alters seasonal weather trends across both hemispheres. An El Niño, which occurs every three to seven years, is declared when sea temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean rise to 0.5☌ above the long-term average. Southeast Asia has already been battered by a prolonged heat wave this year – temperatures topped 50 degrees celsius in parts of Thailand in April, and records were also broken in countries including Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar. Still, ahead of the looming El Niño, every little helps. Yet such an approach does not offer a “permanent solution”, as it’s a weather dependent response that amplifies or redirects – rather than creates – rain. The cloud-seeding operation has helped ease the situation, said Mr Dindang, by pushing rain to fall over the reservoirs’ catchment areas.Īcross the country the water levels of more than 70 dams are now close to capacity, according to Charles Santiago, chairman of the National Water Services Commission. ![]() ![]() The two reservoirs there, which are critical for the country’s semiconductor industry, had already dropped to around 50 per cent of capacity in May – in the first five months of the year, less than half as much rain fell compared to the same period last year. ![]() So far this year, the focus has been on Penang, in northwest Malaysia. Sometimes the process happens very fast, and we’re still inside when it starts to rain.” “We normally go into the cloud two or three times to spray the special solution into the cloud. “We’ve taken a natural process seen over the ocean and accelerated it,” said Mr Dindang. This effectively replicates the role of sea salt by absorbing and catching the moisture, the mixture stimulates water droplets to grow in size and ultimately burst. The pilot opens the rear door and officers wearing harnesses spray the rain-making concoction into the atmosphere.Įxperts use either a silver iodide based solution – this encourages ice crystals to form, which grow and eventually fall as raindrops – or, more commonly in Malaysia, sodium chloride. Once the plane reaches at least 5,000 feet, it heads inside the clouds. “I’ve been supervising ground operations, but previously I’ve been in the air. “We’ve carried out six operations so far this year,” Ambun Dindang, a senior director in the Malaysian Meteorological Department, told the Telegraph. It sounds like science fiction, but the southeast Asian country has been honing its “cloud-seeding” technique – where experts spray tiny particles into clouds to trigger rainfall – for decades to divert monsoons, tackle water shortages and clear pollution.Īnd after a three-year hiatus, the flights are back as the government prepares for the hot and dry conditions set to be unleashed across the region by the El Niño phenomenon, an unusual warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean that affects seasonal weather across the globe. As the reservoirs in northern Malaysia ran dry, scientists enlisted the national air force and took to the skies. ![]()
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