Chennai India - Water Crisis

Discussion of weather and climate outside of NZ's waters. Australian weather, tropical cyclones and USA storm chasing feature here.
Post Reply
BeaconHill
Posts: 239
Joined: Sat 16/05/2009 21:10
Location: Strathmore/Seatoun (on the ridgeline), Wellington
Has thanked: 196 times
Been thanked: 344 times

Chennai India - Water Crisis

Unread post by BeaconHill »

This sounds fairly dire:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48672330

4 million plus people with no water in the four main reservoirs.
"The destruction has just begun," an official said. "If the rain fails us this year too, we are totally destroyed."
First Cape town, now this. It's becoming obvious that access to water will become a major tipping point for many parts of the world in coming years.
User avatar
tgsnoopy
Posts: 3653
Joined: Fri 25/03/2005 21:17
Location: Tauranga, NZ (Curse you COVID-19 :-( )
Has thanked: 816 times
Been thanked: 283 times

Re: Chennai India - Water Crisis

Unread post by tgsnoopy »

Meanwhile our idiotic national and local governments continue to give our valuable resource away for next to nothing :-(
Simon Culling
Posts: 2315
Joined: Mon 23/11/2009 06:41
Location: Tiverton, Devon, UK
Has thanked: 591 times
Been thanked: 646 times

Re: Chennai India - Water Crisis

Unread post by Simon Culling »

This has echoes of Cape Town a couple of years ago. This tweet gives an idea of the effect the prolonged dry weather has had on the largest reservoir in Chennai. However, the climate of this area is one of extremes, so I am not sure how bad this actually is - if the rains arrive soon, they will have flooding!

https://twitter.com/severeweatherEU/sta ... 5045651456
spwill
Posts: 9907
Joined: Sun 29/06/2003 22:39
Location: Mt Eden Auckland
Has thanked: 839 times
Been thanked: 866 times

Re: Chennai India - Water Crisis

Unread post by spwill »

Looks like overdevelopment has been the big issue here, new housing projects with the loss of natural water storage areas and canals with more flooding in the wet years like 2015.


I think in the case of Cape Town a lot of the problems have to do with general poor planning.
Simon Culling
Posts: 2315
Joined: Mon 23/11/2009 06:41
Location: Tiverton, Devon, UK
Has thanked: 591 times
Been thanked: 646 times

Re: Chennai India - Water Crisis

Unread post by Simon Culling »

I have attached the Wikipedia climate chart for Chennai which shows a distinct 'monsoon season' from roughly October to December. The rainfall from May to September will come from showers and thunderstorms, but for a city with an annual rainfall of nearly 1400mm there must be other reasons why they are short of water and I think spwill has alluded to most of them.

Update to the BBC story:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-48674775
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Simon Culling
Posts: 2315
Joined: Mon 23/11/2009 06:41
Location: Tiverton, Devon, UK
Has thanked: 591 times
Been thanked: 646 times

Re: Chennai India - Water Crisis

Unread post by Simon Culling »

The series of graphs on this tweet give a good explanation as to why they have issues with water supply in Chennai.

https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/statu ... 7309315072

If anything, there has been a slight uptick in annual rainfall amounts in the last 100years.
Post Reply