A severe drought in Thailand is affecting agriculture and drinking water in the region.
Thailand is experiencing its worst drought in possibly four decades. About half of the major reservoirs in the country stand below 50 percent of capacity. River levels are so low that saltwater from the ocean is creeping upstream and affecting drinking water supplies. And in a country where 11 million people work in farming, crop production and the economy are expected to suffer.
The drought conditions in Thailand were caused by a shorter-than-normal monsoon season and below-average annual rainfall in 2019. According to the Mekong River Commission (MRC), the monsoon rains arrived almost two weeks later and departed three weeks earlier in the Lower Mekong Basin, which includes Lao PDR (Laos), Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The MRC also stated an El Niño event created abnormally high temperatures and high evapotranspiration. Thailand was predicted to be affected particularly hard; the country is only two months into the dry season and reservoirs for irrigation and drinking are already low.
The map above shows soil moisture anomalies, or how much the water content near the land surface was above or below the norm for southeast Asia from January 1 to February 7, 2020. The measurements were derived from data collected by the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, the first NASA satellite dedicated to measuring the water content of soils. SMAP’s radiometer can detect water in the top 5 centimeters (2 inches) of the ground. Scientists use that surface layer data in a hydrologic model to estimate how much water is present even deeper in the root zone, which is important for agriculture.
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Image via NASA Earth Observatory
