El Niño weather phenomenon depletes reservoirs and limits output at hydroelectric plants

Ecuador has begun to ration electricity in the country’s main cities as a drought linked to the El Niño weather pattern depletes reservoirs and limits output at hydroelectric plants that produce about 75% of the nation’s power.

“We urge Ecuadorians to cut their electricity consumption in this critical week,” the ministry of energy said in a statement late on Monday. “And consider that each kilowatt and each drop of water that are not consumed will help us face this reality.”

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The resort island is facing days without running water, even as the country celebrates new year with water fights

Across Thailand, people are getting ready to take to the streets for a giant water fight to mark the new year. Roads will be lined with vendors selling water pistols, businesses will put out buckets of icy water for refills and no passersby is safe.

What began as a tradition of the Songkran festival to sprinkle water on the hands of elders, in a symbol of cleansing and reverence to mark the new year, has evolved into huge water fights that draw tourists from across the world.

But on the tourist resort island of Samui, the water fights and celebrations bely a long running problem: the island is parched.

Residents say taps can stop running for days,causing disruption to businesses and daily life.

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Bogotá brings in water rationing with El Niño weather phenomenon meaning city could run out in under two months

Couples in Bogotá are being asked to shower together as water supplies are rationed in the Colombian capital.

Major neighbourhoods were cut off from the water grid on Thursday to preserve dangerously low water levels at reservoirs that have been starved of rain by the weather phenomenon known as El Niño.

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Emmerson Mnangagwa says country needs $2bn of aid as severe dry spell caused by El Niño afflicts southern Africa

Zimbabwe has declared a national disaster over a drought caused by the climate event known as El Niño and President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said the country needs $2bn in aid to help millions of people who are going hungry.

The severe dry spell is wreaking havoc across southern Africa.

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In rural Rajasthan, villagers have taken action against climate damage by constructing water-saving walls, trenches and dams to revive their farmland

The villagers of Surajpura have built a wall: a 15ft (4.5 metre) mud bulwark that snakes through barren land for nearly a mile, with an equally long trench dug beneath it. It might not look like it, but for the 650 residents who toiled on it for six months in 2022, it is an architectural marvel.

The wall passed its strength test last year when it stopped rainwater runoffs, and the trench channelled the water to parched farms in the drought-prone region of Rajasthan in north-west India, reviving them for the first time in more than two decades.

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Authorities advise parents to keep children indoors during extreme heatwave, expected to last two weeks

South Sudan is closing all schools from Monday in preparation for an extreme heatwave expected to last two weeks.

The health and education ministries have advised parents to keep all children indoors as temperatures are expected to soar to 45C (113F).

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Increased evaporation, shorter rainy seasons and less mountain snow cover are set to worsen water crises in the western Mediterranean

Magdalena Coromina tapped the hard ground with her walking stick and looked up at a church that was meant to be underwater. Six decades ago, when engineers had built the reservoir in which she stood, they had flooded the town of Sant Romà de Sau and drowned its buildings. The rains that slaked the region’s thirst had kept the ruins covered.

But that world no longer exists. Struck by a drought that has dried the reservoir to 1% of its capacity, the remains of the village have come back into view. Crumbling stone structures now sit on cracked soil among ashen plants. The church, whose spire used to poke above the surface during dry spells, today stands high above the waterline.

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After drought devastated prized arborio and carnaroli harvests in the Po valley, new rice varieties offer a glimmer of hope. But none are yet suitable for use in the traditional recipe

• Photographs by Marco Massa and Haakon Sand

For most of winter and spring in 2022, Luigi Ferraris, a 58-year-old rice farmer from Mortara, a town in the Po valley, remained hopeful. Rainfall had been down 40% in the first six months of the year, and snow had accumulated thinly in the Alps, prompting an 88% drop in the amount of water coming to the Po River from snow-melt; flow in the river and its connected canals was at a historic low.

But Ferraris believed things would soon return to normal. “I thought the lack of water would be temporary,” he says.

The River Po with rice fields stretching across the valley

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Since a cyclone killed half a million people in 1970, Bangladesh has been acutely aware of the climate crisis. Now a report says the country is reaching the limit of its ability to withstand it

As far back as she can remember, Shahanaz Ali has been running from cyclones. “Moving constantly from one place to another is exhausting,” says Ali. “Nowhere feels like home.” Her family first fled from their house in 1970, when Bangladesh was devastated by Cyclone Bhola – one of the deadliest cyclones in history.

Up to 500,000 people died , including Ali’s grandparents. The largely inadequate response of the ruling Pakistani government towards the cyclone’s Bengali victims in what was then East Pakistan triggered Bangladesh’s war of independence a year later.

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