The world is seeing a nautical disaster of epic proportions as the water levels in the Panama Canal continue to decrease, causing traffic congestion that is harming global trade and sending shockwaves through the shipping sector.
The Panama Canal has been a vital artery for international trade for over a century, providing a shortcut for ships travelling between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. However, the region's chronic drought, exacerbated by climate change, has driven the canal's water levels to historic lows, making travel increasingly dangerous.
Hundreds of ships are backed up at the?Panama Canal, where officials have restricted transit through one of the world's most significant commerce lanes due to low water levels caused by El Nio and climate change.
The traffic bottleneck is a bad omen for a global economy thrown off by supply-chain issues, especially for American enterprises. The canal that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans carries approximately 40% of US container?traffic.?
Congestion is driving up shipping costs and causing delays in delivering goods just as importers prepare for the holiday season.?
"We have all the conditions we need to replicate what we had in 2015-16," said Steven Paton, director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's environmental monitoring programme. In several places in Central America, it was one of the driest seasons on record.?
"There will be greater restrictions" on ships passing through the canal next spring, when it is the driest of the year, he said. To preserve water, canal authorities limit the number of boats?permitted to transit the canal daily to 32, down from an average of 36 at regular intervals.
They've also put weight limits on the vessels. Each ship requires around 50 million gallons of water to get through the locks. Only a portion of it is recycled.?
Typically, up to 90 boats await entry into the canal; there were more than 120 this week. As many as 160 ships were idle earlier this month.?
According to Abe Eshkenazi, CEO of the Chicago-based Association for Supply Chain Management, the congestion contributes to the global bottlenecks caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the COVID-19 outbreak.?
"We're just seeing another disruption on top of an already stressed system," he explained. Panama is commonly regarded as one of the world's wettest countries, with a rainy season lasting from May until late December.?
However, the canal region is seeing one of its driest years since records began 143 years ago, according to Paton.?
This summer, high-pressure heat domes have centred on much of the Caribbean and Central America, snuffing out rain chances and bringing extreme temperatures. Drought is also affecting Mexico and other countries in the region.?
The hot and dry circumstances cause greater water temperatures, more evaporation, and reduced replenishment of the lakes that feed the Panama Canal from the source rainforests.?
This means there will be even less available water in the lakes and reduced water levels in the canal.?
A developing and severe El Nio, warming waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, and human-caused climate change will likely outweigh Panama's recent dry spell.
While El Nio acts as a multiplier, the drought began earlier in the year, with roughly 10 to 25 percent of typical rainfall in the area from February to April.
"The main impacts of climate change in Panama are related to an increase in the number, intensity, and variability of extreme precipitation events, severe droughts, and high?temperatures," said Piedad Martin of the United Nations earlier this year when the Panamanian government launched a climate resilience programme.
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