Heatwave withers lake, threatens rice crop in Malaysia’s north as climate crisis bites

The drought is being attributed to the 2023–2024 El Niño weather event, which at its peak was measured as one of the five strongest on record, resulting in widespread water shortages, flooding and other natural disasters across the globe.

The incoming La Niña weather event, however, is expected to bring higher-than-normal rainfall, meteorologists warn, which could result in severe flooding as it coincides with the yearly flood season in December.

In Malaysia, the El Niño weather phenomenon has collided with the regular regional Southwest Monsoon season, which brings lower air humidity, causing less rain cloud formation and lower rainfall from May to September, according to the Meteorology Department.

Taiping, Malaysia’s wettest town on average, has gone without rain for over a month and the water has run dry at the area’s famous Taiping Lake Gardens, endangering its fertile collection of century-old rain trees.

Further north in Kedah, the drying up of the 45-metre-deep Pedu Lake reservoir has exposed the old graves of former villages relocated in 1969 to make way for the 75 sq km man-made lake.

Mohamad Faiz Mohd Amin, a water resources expert at Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, told This Week in Asia, that Taiping’s sharp decrease in rainfall, from an annual average of 4,000mm to less than 100mm, shows the country is in the teeth of climate change.

“The phenomenon of water level reduction in lakes such as Taiping and Lake Pedu is indeed worrying and can be an indication of the extraordinary effects of climate change,” Mohamad Faiz said.

The professor, who is a guest researcher at the Kyoto University Water Resource Research Centre, said that the average yearly temperature in Malaysia has increased by 0.14 degrees Celsius every