Water Water Everywhere yet they have a drought?

Okay, this is an odd one. Would you believe a drought with real danger can happen on a South Pacific Island? Well, apparently it can, does and IS right at the moment. Amazing, but I don't write these stories. Really! I just share the more interesting ones as I find them.

A severe drought in the northern Marshall Islands has prompted the government to declare a state of emergency. President Christopher Loeak approved the decision after receiving a recommendation by the government's disaster preparedness committee. Marshall Islands meteorologist Regi White has told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat a tropical low over the northern islands has severely impacted rainfall. "Wotje Atoll, one of the islands most to the north of Marshall Islands, has experienced zero rainfall on several of the previous months," he said.

(Source: RSOE - Event Index)

By the way, this is what being surrounded by water in a drought looks like:


Crazy world sometimes, isn't it?

The water is salt water, they probably don't have desalinization plants to utilize it.

Would require the proper infrastructure to do, but I recall a thread about small solar desalination equipment that could help...

portable solar desalination

found it

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

Removed first line as i didnt read the bit under the image lol

Salt water is no good for plants, or people...isnt that common knowledge? If you are at sea, you will survive longer if you dont drink the water than if you drank the salty water that surrounded you.

Originally posted by AmberLeaf
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

I thought you were pretty clued up until you posted this lol

Salt water is no good for plants, or people...isnt that common knowledge? If you are at sea, you will survive longer if you dont drink the water than if you drank the salty water that surrounded you.

I believe wrabbit was pointing out the irony of it.

reply to post by benrl


Ahh i see the bit at the bottom "crazy world sometimes"

I missed that part lol

It is ironic that an island surrounded by water can have a drought, but doesnt drought refer to rainfall/precipitation rather than the abundance of water?

reply to post by benrl

Indeed.. It is the irony of it that most got my attention. I know the salt water would kill crops and people as well if substituted for the fresh water they don't have falling in rain. Much like people lost at sea can die from dehydration or the madness that drinking sea water brings them. What a choice?

It seems all the more crazy when it's not a small boat adrift but an Island chain with an established local population. What a place to have a drought?

I always thought of the South Pacific as having entirely too much rainfall. It really hadn't occurred to me before seeing this across RSOE as a disaster notice that they could suffer a true defined drought condition.

The real irony here is that this island is surrounded by ocean, thus there should be a lot of atmospheric water vapour coming off of the oceans, building up saturation, and then coming back down as rainfall.

Very weird.

I would've thought that Solar stills would have worked brilliantly there? There should be quite some humidity to that air & i'm assuming that boat owners (at least) would have Tarps'. Obviously not a long term solution but if everyone pitched in i could see it making the difference between survival & the alternative.

Originally posted by benrl
The water is salt water, they probably don't have desalinization plants to utilize it.

Would require the proper infrastructure to do, but I recall a thread about small solar desalination equipment that could help...

portable solar desalination

found it

edit on 25-4-2013 by benrl because: (no reason given)

"they probably don't have desalinization plants to utilize it."

of course they do not..if they do..they can name the island Plant Island..because it will be only thing there

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


s/f Wrabbit...

I have been musing this myself for the last couple of months. They should be putting more funding and research into trying to find the quickest, cheapest and most efficient process of desalinating large quantities of water..

Apparently the reason they are not watering the deserts of the world is because it is simply 'too expensive'... BS...!
They should have the technology available to do so in this day and age.. If they can make a military invisibility cloak and make an robotic hand that can be controlled by someone's thoughts. Then I am sure as hell they can figure out a way to make it easier..!

Especially if it powered by solar energy..

If they stopped putting millions and billions of money into military and making weapons and instead put that money into trying to help our mother earth and her people. By creating a cheap and efficient desalination system that even the developing countries could afford then there would be more fertile earth for food and water for people, flora and fauna..!

Gah..! It makes no sense in my brain...

Education is needed... There are some very simple ways to make your own desalination system... Even using a plastic bottle...

www.instructables.com...

homemadecircuitsandschematics.blogspot.co.uk...

www.wikihow.com...

phys.org...



Seemingly there are people out there who are concentrating their efforts on making this process cheaper and more efficient..

inhabitat.com...

www.ecochunk.com...

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


unfortunately drought on pacific islands is all too common. three years ago i was in the Philippines during one. i was amazed, cracks were forming in the ground well over four feet deep (i only had a four foot long piece of bamboo to probe the cracks with) due to the ground completely drying out. personally i had never seen ground that dried out before.

there IS a lot of rain at CERTAIN times of year, yet the rest of the year can have little rain or some rain, no rain etc. even when it does rain it may only hit a portion of manila (for example) causing roads to flood, yet leaving other portions dry. i would imagine in the mountainous areas one side will get rain while the other side remains dry.

it's kinda like everywhere else,except instead of a "snow season" it is "rain season" instead, lots and lots of rain. but only for a couple months of the year, the rest is hit or miss like the rest of the world. in fact over the last 8 months, we really haven't had all that much rain. but the rainy season is on it's way, being about halfway through the summer now.