Efforts to save the Panama Canal from drought.

Measures such as building reservoirs and creating artificial rain take a long time to implement, while the Panama Canal is being severely affected by drought.

The Panama Canal is experiencing its worst drought in 70 years. Photo: CGTN

Just a few hundred meters from the massive ships carrying global cargo, gnarled tree stumps rise from the water. They are the remnants of a forest that was submerged more than a century ago to create the canal. At the height of the dry season, seeing them is nothing unusual. But now, after the rainy season, they should be completely submerged. This is clear evidence of the impact of dry weather on a waterway that handles $270 billion worth of goods annually, according to Bloomberg .

The Panama Canal Authority (PCA) is considering potential solutions including building reservoirs to pump water into the canal and artificial rainmaking to increase rainfall, but both options would take years to implement if feasible. With water levels 1.8 meters lower than normal, the PCA has had to restrict the number of ships passing through. The restrictions implemented late last year were the strictest since 1989. Some shipping companies are paying millions of dollars to avoid queuing, while many others are taking longer and more expensive routes around Africa or South America.

The restrictions were eased by higher-than-expected rainfall in November 2023, but at 24 vessels per day, this maximum is still far below pre-drought capacity of 38 vessels. When the dry season arrives, the situation will worsen again. The condition of the canal reflects the impact of climate change on global trade. Droughts create weak points on the Mississippi River in the US and the Rhine River in Europe. In the UK, rising sea levels increase the risk of flooding along the Thames. Melting ice creates new waterways in the Arctic.

Under normal circumstances, the Panama Canal handles approximately 3% of global maritime trade and 46% of container traffic from Northeast Asia to the East Coast of the United States. The canal is Panama's largest source of revenue, bringing in $4.3 billion in 2022. To allow 24 ships to pass through a day during the dry season, the canal releases water from Lake Alajuela, a secondary reservoir. If the rains begin in May, the canal can increase its throughput, according to Erick Córdoba, water manager at the PCA. But that's only a short-term solution. In the long term, the key solution to the chronic water shortage is to build a dam on the Indio River, then drill a tunnel through the mountains to channel freshwater 8 km into Lake Gatún, the canal's main reservoir.

Along with other conservation measures, the project will cost around $2 billion, Córdoba estimates. He said it will take at least six years to build the dam. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is conducting a feasibility study. The Indio River reservoir will increase the number of ships, enough to maintain the canal while also providing clean water for Panama City. The country will need to build dams on more rivers to ensure sufficient water until the end of the century. However, advancing the proposal is not easy, as it requires parliamentary approval and the consent of thousands of farmers and ranchers who are opposing the plan because their land will be submerged.

Another potential solution is more experimental. In November 2023, a small aircraft operated by Weather Modification Inc. in North Dakota flew to Panama to test artificial rainmaking, a process of spraying large salt particles into clouds to promote condensation and create rain. However, artificial rainmaking has primarily been successfully applied in dry weather, not in tropical countries like Panama.

Some shipping companies have expressed frustration at the PCA's slow response to low water levels. "No major infrastructure projects are progressing in Panama to increase the supply of clean water," said Jeremy Nixon, CEO of the Japanese container shipping company Ocean Network Express Holdings Ltd. (ONE).

Climate change combined with infrastructure expansion is causing the canal's problems. The PCA completed a series of new locks to increase traffic and keep up with the growing size of cargo ships. What they failed to do was build a new reservoir to pump enough freshwater, and then droughts occurred. As of last November, 2023 was the driest year on history at Barro Colorado Island in Lake Gatún, according to Steve Paton, director of the nature monitoring program at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Global warming exacerbates the effects of the El Niño weather phenomenon, bringing drought conditions to Panama, expected to last at least until March in the Northern Hemisphere. Lake Gatún dries up faster during the dry season, and rising temperatures accelerate evaporation. In 2023, the trade winds were unusually weak, contributing to record-high water temperatures in Panama's Pacific and Atlantic coastal regions. Weak winds also meant that rain clouds couldn't reach Gatún. For days, rain poured down on Panama City while the lake received very little rainfall.

The crisis has hampered the existing waterway for more than a century. When it began operating in 1914, the canal provided an alternative to the Suez Canal, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Strait of Magellan for transporting goods between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Now, shipping companies are returning to all three options to avoid the bottleneck in Panama.

While the Suez Canal is at sea level, the Panama Canal is a freshwater canal dependent on a man-made lake, making it vulnerable to drought. Jorge Luis Quijano, a consultant and former director of the PCA, said it could take a year for the lake to return to its normal flow. Quijano said he recognized the problem a decade ago when he oversaw the construction of a new series of locks to accommodate larger ships through the canal. The locks are a marvel of engineering but also consume a lot of water.

Seawater mixes with freshwater when the lock is in operation. To prevent the country's largest mobile water source, Lake Gatún, from salinizing, the canal releases enough lake water to fill 76 Olympic swimming pools for each ship. The vast catchment area returns some of the water to the lake, but because this process increases salinity, it can only be used to a limited extent. Before his term ended, Quijano urged the government to begin building more reservoirs, but without success.

An Khang (According to Bloomberg )

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