Since the end of May, Panama has been in a state of environmental emergency throughout its territory due to extreme weather conditions that could worsen with the imminent arrival of El Niño. The Panama Canal Authority has announced on its website the water-saving measures it is implementing due to the drought affecting the country and warns that the situation could worsen with the arrival of the El Niño phenomenon, which would cause the early start of the 2024 dry season.
The Panama Canal will continue to apply water-saving measures during the rainy months to recover the level of the lakes and guarantee the supply of drinking water for human consumption, trying to minimize the impact on transits through the interoceanic waterway. However, there are warnings about the inevitable economic consequences of this situation.
At the end of May, the national Cabinet Council declared a state of environmental emergency throughout Panama due to the prolonged drought, attributed to the global climate crisis. Panama Canal Administrator Ricaurte Vásquez Morales pointed out that the fresh water shortage in the country is an issue that has been warned about for many years and is now being experienced, although it was not known exactly when it would happen.
Due to the extreme weather conditions currently being experienced in Panama, the usual five-year drought cycle has been reduced to three years. This May has been the driest since 1950, according to Canal statistics.
The Panama Canal has implemented water-saving measures in its operations, such as crossing locks in the old panamax locks, scheduling transits to reuse water in the chambers, and revising the direction and timing of ships in the modern neopanamax locks. Should conditions worsen, more extreme measures could be taken, such as limiting the number of daily transits.
The El Niño phenomenon, which is a climatic variability caused by the interaction between ocean and atmospheric conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean, is a cause for concern. In Panama, El Niño causes severe droughts and brings with it a decrease in rainfall on the Pacific slope and an increase in temperatures. In previous years, El Niño has caused scheduled power outages, reduced crop planting, forest fires, and restrictions on the draft of ships transiting the canal.
El Niño conditions are already present, according to the Climate Prediction Center, and are expected to gradually strengthen through the northern hemisphere winter of 2023–2024.