A recent study has revealed the shortage of water in the Panama Canal. This caused a bottleneck in shipping at the end of last year due to El Niño, not climate change.
World Weather Attribution (WWA) is a multinational group studying climate change. According to reports by AP and Reuters on June 1st (GMT), they have identified El Niño as the cause of the low rainfall that hindered ship passage through the Panama Canal. Disrupting weather patterns worldwide every 2 to 7 years, this natural climate phenomenon led to a 26% decrease in last year’s rainfall in the Panama Canal region compared to the average. Researchers attribute this significant drop to El Niño. By comparing rainfall data from a climate model that assumed no global warming with actual rainfall changes, researchers found it challenging to attribute the Panama Canal’s water shortage to human-accelerated climate change. They noted that it is difficult to find a significant difference or correlation between rainfall changes due to global warming and those in a world without it. The research team predicts that the Panama Canal will mostly recover its water levels during this year’s rainy season, marking the end of El Niño.
Meanwhile, the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) recently announced in a notice sent to the shipping industry that “if conditions remain unchanged, we will be able to gradually increase the daily number of ship reservations from the current 24 to 32 starting from June 15th.” The typical number of daily ship passages through the Panama Canal is between 35 and 36.