People in Shenyang travel with sun protection as the high temperature continues on June 19, 2023. Photo: VCG

 
El Niño, a natural phenomenon in the tropical Pacific Ocean that causes extreme weather conditions, has arrived in China, resulting in extremely high temperatures and flooding, which poses a risk to food production.

Despite the potential threat, experts said that El Niño's impact on the nation's food security is limited, while the country is ramping up efforts to brace for the harsh weather patterns. 

Many parts of the country have experienced rare heat waves and record high temperatures lately. As of Sunday, 45.04 million mu (3 million hectares) of cultivated land suffered from drought, and 200,000 people and 760,000 large livestock had difficulty accessing drinking water, the Xinhua News Agency reported, citing data from the Ministry of Water Resources.

The drought was largely concentrated in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Hebei Province, Northeast China's Liaoning Province and surrounding areas.

Meanwhile, heavy rainfalls are ravaging parts of China's coastal regions in the south and southeast. Water level in more than 15 rivers in East China's Fujian Province and Jiangxi Province, South China's Guangdong Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region had risen above the warning level. 

The China Meteorological Administration announced earlier this month that El Niño has arrived and is expected to bring more extreme weather to the country.

El Niño is a naturally occurring climate pattern characterized by warming ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. It typically occurs every two to seven years and lasts for nine to 12 months, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

China, not far from the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, will share some of the global temperature anomalies as El Niño develops, including more rainfall in the southern part of the country and a warmer winter, said Zhou Bing, chief expert of the administration's meteorological service department. And, El Niño can cause extreme drought in certain regions of China.

"At present, the extreme weather will not necessarily lead to a visible reduction in grain production in China, and the regions south of the Yellow River will see limited impact," Ma Wenfeng, a senior analyst at Beijing Orient Agribusiness Consultancy, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"But it still depends on the development of the climate," Ma added.

Li Guoxiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noted the extreme weather in parts of China will have limited impact on autumn grain production. The current period of weather anomaly is not as a critical as that of August and September when rice, for example, enters the harvesting stage.

"But if the high temperature persists, it will have a negative impact on the harvest," Li told the Global Times on Tuesday.

As of June 19, the harvested area of winter wheat in China had reached 300 million mu, completing over 90 percent of the country's summer harvest, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said. The bumper summer grain harvest, which accounts for a quarter of the country's annual grain output, has laid a solid foundation for the nation's food security, experts said.

Prior to the sweltering summer, heat waves engulfed multiple countries including Thailand, Spain, Vietnam and Canada as early as April this year.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology shifted its El Niño outlook from "watch" to "alert" earlier this month, suggesting that there is a 70-percent chance of an El Niño event developing this year.

The WMO predicted that the El Niño phenomenon in 2023 will cause Argentina, Turkey, the US and other grain exporting countries to face excessive precipitations; while Australia, Brazil, South Africa and other major grain producing and exporting countries will face the risk of drought.

The prices of grain and non-fuel commodities will be affected accordingly. An analysis report by the IMF showed that El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle can account for 20 percent of commodity price inflation.
To brace for a continuation of the extreme weather, Ma suggested that the electricity supply department and hospitals should make preparations in advance.