El Niño
About El Niño
El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific, including the area off the Pacific coast of South America.
El Nino drought: Panama Canal cuts ship numbers further
... A naturally occurring El Nino climate pattern associated with warmer-than-usual water in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean is contributing to Panama s drought...
Climate change: How it's endangering Australian wine
... The country is still recovering from years of record-breaking floods, but with an El Nino summer likely to bring dry and hot conditions to much of Australia, panic is growing ahead of the coming fire season...
Why have there been no named winter storms this year?
... Experts believe that rising global temperatures mean that La Nina and El Nino - the opposite of La Nina - events...
Are fires in the Amazon and elsewhere getting worse?
... But this is substantially fewer than many other years including those, such as 2015, exacerbated by the El Nino effect which brought unusually dry weather...
El Nino drought: Panama Canal cuts ship numbers further
By Peter HoskinsBBC News
The Panama Canal will make more cuts to The Number of ships using the waterway due to the worst drought in over 70 years, authorities say.
The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) says it has been forced to make the decision due to the driest October since records began in 1950.
The has contributed to the severe drought, the ACP says.
It is expected to increase the cost of shipping goods around The World .
A naturally occurring El Nino climate pattern associated with warmer-than-usual water in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean is contributing to Panama's drought.
Water levels in Gatun Lake , the rainfall-fed reservoir that is the Main Source of water used in The Canal 's lock system, have " continued to decline to unprecedented levels for This Time of year, " according to the ACP.
Starting from 3 November, booking slots will be cut to 25 per day from an already reduced 31 per day,
That number will be further reduced over The Next three months to 18 slots per day from the start of February 2024.
In recent months, the ACP has imposed various passage restrictions to conserve scarce water.
The measures already in place have caused long delays, with tens of ships having to wait to use The Canal .
Those delays have " pushed shipping rates higher elsewhere by decreasing the globally available number of vessels, " according to an analyst note from the US Energy Information Administration.
Delays for some gas transporters were at record highs in Panama, pushing up the cost of shipping liquefied gas from the US, it added.
Related TopicsSource of news: bbc.com