Increasing Singapore's resilience to drought

• Main Authors: ZIEGLER, Alan D., TERRY, James P., OLIVER, Grahame J. H., FRIESS, Daniel A., CHUAH, Choong Joon, CHOW, Winston T. L., WASSON, Robert J.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2014
• Subjects: Environmental Sciences
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3056; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4313/viewcontent/ziegler_et_al_2014_HP_28___increasing_singapores_resilience_to_drought.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Recent Meteorological Droughts in Southeast Asia Singapore, Southeast Asia’s small, developed, densely populated, equatorial island nation, experienced a 2-month dry spell (meteorological drought) at the beginning of 2014. Although February falls within the relatively dry phase of the north-east monsoon season, the near-zero total of rainfall recorded at the reference meteorological station at Changi Airport was 160 mm below the long-term monthly mean (NEA, 2014a), resulting in the driest month since 1869. By mid-March, small streams in both forested and urban catchments ran dry. Open water bodies including ponds and reservoirs shrank substantially in size. The long-range prospects for 2014 were not promising, as an El Niño event was predicted to develop later in the year (e.g. Ludescher et al., 2014). Unprecedented in the minds of many, the dry spell should nonetheless be viewed as an uncommon reminder of Singapore’s vulnerability to drought.