ECONOMIC SPOTLIGHT - ASIAN DROUGHTS Three geographically diverse droughts in Asia are being linked by some scientists to a reintensification of the complex and little-understood El Nino weather pattern, <Accu-Weather Inc>, a commercial weather forecasting service, said. Rice and wheat farmers in China, wheat and sugarcane growers in Australia and tea planters in Sri Lanka all face serious losses to their respective harvests unless rains arrive in time to break the droughts, offical reports, government officials and meteorologists said. Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong daily with close Peking links, said the drought is the worst in over 20 years and some provinces have been without adequate rainfall for more than seven months. Rice planting is threatened in eight provinces, it added. Rainfall in the key farming provinces of Henan and Sichuan was 70 pct below average during February, the lowest figure for over 20 years, the paper said. The dry weather has cut stored water volumes by over 20 pct compared with last March and lowered the water levels of many rivers, it added. This has resulted in reduced hydro-electric power, causing shortages to industry and households. The upper reaches of the Yangtze are at their lowest levels in a century, causing many ships to run aground, Wen Wei Po said. Unusually high temperatures have also been reported across China, media reports said. The People's Daily said Sichuan has recorded temperatures three degrees Celsius higher than average since early February. The New China News Agency said the average December temperature in Harbin in the northeast was six degrees higher than last December and 14 degrees higher than December 1984. Severe drought is affecting about one-third of Sri Lanka and threatens to reduce the country's tea crop, Ministry of Plantation Industries officials told Reuters In Australia, concern is growing about below-average rainfall levels in parts of the sugarcane belt along the Queensland coast and in Western Australia's wheat belt, local Meteorological Bureau officials said. For many farmers and government officials the fear is that while the present low rainfall does not yet pose a major threat, the prospect of a dry autumn/winter season when the wheat crop is in its early stages certainly does, they added. Concern is heightened by the memory of the 1982/83 drought which devastated the wheat crop and coincided with the occurrence of the barely understood weather phenomenon known as El Nino, they said. Although meteorologists are cautious about linking the Asia-Pacific region's disrupted weather patterns to any single cause, El Nino's role is being closely studied, they said. Accu-Weather Inc, which specialises in providing data for agriculture and shipping interests, said each El Nino 'event' was unique. The El Nino does not always produce the same effects and the present occurrence is much less pronounced than the last major event in 1982/83, it said. El Nino, Spanish for "Christ Child" because it appears around Christmas, is formed by the action of warm air, bearing clouds and rain, shifting from the Indonesian archipelago to the coast of Peru, where it mingles with the cold waters associated with the Peru current and returns across the Pacific as the trade winds, meteorologists said. The winds, strengthened by El Nino's "pump" effect, raise the sea level off Australia and Indonesia, they said. When the winds drop, the ocean, seeking equilibrium, sends a surge of warmer water back across the Pacific where it collides with the cold seas off Peru, they said. One effect of this heat exchange is to deflect the rain-bearing clouds away from Australia and Indonesia into the Pacific, where they further disrupt other weather patterns. The prospects for an end to the droughts vary, Accu-Weather said. China, where the affected areas have received between 40 and 75 pct of normal rainfall, will have to wait for the May-September rains, it said. The May-September rains normally provide the drought-striken areas with 80 pct of annual rainfall. In Australia, areas of Queensland's coastal strip have received less than half the normal rainfall during the current wet season, but prospects for increased rains are diminishing as the rainy season draws to an end. In Sri Lanka, the drought has come when rainfall should be at its maximum for the year. The year's secondary rains usually occur between April and June, although it is not possible at this stage to forecast whether they will arrive as usual.