The Worse Drought in 200 Years

Some of China's provinces are facing the worst drought in 200 years. 
Xinhua reported about a solution to reduce the sufferings of the Chinese farmers: "China's air force has boosted the volume of rain and snow in four of country's driest provinces to alleviate drought.
An air force cargo plane took off from Yaoqiang Airport in east China's Jinan City, capital of Shandong Province, and performed cloud seeding in four provinces including Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu and Anhui. The operation took about six hours and covered nearly 50,000 square kilometers. The cargo plane shot more than 400 cloud-seeding shells into the sky in two sorties."
Unfortunately, this type of situation will keep recurring. It induced some Chinese engineers to think of a more radical solution. To divert waters from the South to the North and more frightfully (for India) from the West (Tibet) to the mainland. 
A few months ago, I wrote: "One of the possibilities was to divert waters from the Great Bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo, north of the McMahon Line by building a mega structure. There are different versions of the project, but the Shuotian Canal is the most elaborated. It is the brainchild of an engineer, Guo Kai whose life mission is to save China with Tibet’s waters. He has calculated that if waters from the Salween, the Mekong, the Yangtse, the Yalong and the Dadu (last two are Yangtse’s tributaries) were diverted and directed to the Ngawa Prefecture of Qinghai (Amdo) Province, the problem for the recurrent water shortage in north and northwest China could be solved (today, the Yellow River is dry more than 250 days in a year).
Guo not only worked closely with experts from the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources and the Academy of Sciences (CAS), but also made several on-the-spot investigations and surveys, before coming up with the details of his pharaonic scheme. According to him, the ‘Great Western Route’ diversion could solve the water shortage in north China, bring drinkable water to Tanjing and even counter the desertification facing the northern and northwestern provinces. It is why it is considered so vital to the Middle Kingdom’s strategic security."
China's future is not rosy. 

East China wheat basket braces for worst drought in 200 years
English.news.cn   2011-02-08 16:21:09    
JINAN, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- East China's Shandong Province, one of the country's major grain producers, is bracing for its worst drought in 200 years.
Liu Wei, deputy Party chief of Shandong, Monday told a meeting on drought relief mobilization that Party and local government agriculture officials of all levels should go to farms to ensure drought alleviation measures were being implemented.
"Provincial authorities should hold officials accountable if drought relief work is not well done," said Liu, deputy secretary of the Shandong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.
Data from the provincial meteorological bureau showed the drought would be Shandong's worst in 200 years if there were no substantial precipitation by the end of this month. The province has received only 12 millimeters of rain since September last year.
The central government Friday initiated a grade II emergency response in eight drought-ravaged provinces, including Shandong, under which the provinces began 24-hour weather monitoring and daily damage reports, and sent experts and relief materials to wheat growing areas.
The four-month drought had affected 35.1 percent of wheat crops -- 96.11 million mu (6.4 million hectares) -- accounting for 21.7 percent of total farmland in the provinces, the Ministry of Agriculture announced Monday.
The wheat growing area in the eight provinces accounted for more than 80 percent of the country's total, said a statement from the ministry's website on Friday.
Yin Changwen, spokesman of the Shandong provincial headquarters of flood-control and drought-relief, said Friday that water-efficient irrigation facilities under construction in Shandong were expected to supply 191 million cubic meters of water to farms this spring.
The four-month drought had affected 35.1 percent of wheat crops -- 96.11 million mu (6.4 million hectares) -- accounting for 21.7 percent of total farmland in the provinces, the Ministry of Agriculture announced Monday.
The wheat growing area in the eight provinces accounted for more than 80 percent of the country's total, said a statement from the ministry's website on Friday.
Yin Changwen, spokesman of the Shandong provincial headquarters of flood-control and drought-relief, said Friday that water-efficient irrigation facilities under construction in Shandong were expected to supply 191 million cubic meters of water to farms this spring.