Water has been pumped from a canal to a waterway to ease the drought and ensure the harvest since August 18, 2022 in Ma'anshan, East China's Anhui Province as Chinese provinces and regions are battling prolonged heat waves. Photo: VCG

China's water resources authorities on Thursday warned that the country is expected to face more frequent extreme weathers, including droughts and floods, and urged all the relevant departments to take preparations and to handle emergent situations to ensure water conservancy safety. 

 Based on preliminary forecasts, this year's flood season is predicted to see frequent and repeated extreme weather events in the country, with both droughts and floods weighing heavily on the water conservancy infrastructures, according to China's Ministry of Water Resources.

The ministry has issued a notice to ensure reservoirs, dikes and locks running safely during the flood season in 2023 by putting people's safety at first place. More efforts are urged to enforce accountability for the water projects management, and the relevant departments should make better preparations for different situations, as well as strengthen supervision and monitoring.

Water administrative departments at provincial-level should strengthen rainfall forecast and flood warnings, establishing a mechanism which could send the warning information to the front line and the unit or person who is in charge of the reservoir directly and implementing dispatch orders strictly, according to the notice released by the ministry on Wednesday.

China has acted effectively, promptly and more adeptly to extreme weathers such as heat waves and heavy floods. Experts believed that the summer of 2022 has witnessed the strongest heat wave in six decades and they also predicted the long-lasting heat wave will become a "new normal" in the future due to aggravating global warming. 

In June 2022, several cities including Chongqing in Southwest China and Qingdao in East China's Shandong Province suffered severe floods caused by torrential rainfall, which forced a number of people to transfer to safe places.

It is of great significance to ensure water conservancy projects running safely during flood season this year, which marks the beginning of fully implementing the spirit of 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, according to the ministry.

Some southern regions are asked to take preventive measures for heavy rains and floods as the flood season began in March this year.

Heavy rainfall hit China's southern regions from March 21 to 24, with the total precipitation in an area of 371,000 square kilometers surpassing 50 millimeters, according to the ministry.

China is expected to see more severe floods in some areas this year. The middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, the Haihe River basin and the Pearl River basin are predicted to see relatively severe flood conditions. The regions located in the southern of Yangtze River may have phased drought, the water resources authorities predicted.