Chile faces record drought for tenth consecutive year

Chile faces record drought for tenth consecutive year
Chile faces record drought for tenth consecutive year
Anonim

Severe drought in central Chile continues for the tenth consecutive year, setting the record for the longest drought in the country's history, according to Severe Weather.

Drought is common in Chile, but the current one poses a serious threat to water supplies. Many bodies of water dry up at historically low levels. Currently, there are more than 400 thousand families, or about 1.5 million people, whose water supply depends on the supply of water by road tankers.

There has been no such drought since Chile's weather records began in 1915, according to meteorologists. Scientists from the University of Chile, who are reconstructing data on past climatic conditions from tree rings, estimate that the last drought of this magnitude occurred in the region more than 1000 years ago.

Since 2010, rainfall in central Chile has been below normal every year by an average of 20-45%. Between 2014 and 2019, only 10-20% of normal rainfall was recorded.

NASA images show a significant decrease in the level of the El Yeso reservoir, which supplies water to the city of Santiago. From 2016 to the present, the amount of water has decreased from 219 to 99 million cubic meters. m of water. This is only 40% of the reservoir volume.

Reservoirs are usually filled with melt water from nearby mountains. Due to a significant decrease in precipitation in the mountains, there is almost no replenishment of water bodies.

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