Climate change blights Panama Canal

At the end of last year, the Panama Canal had a problem: too much water. Torrential rains had swollen its main water source, the artificial Lake Gatún, beyond capacity, forcing the canal authority to open the floodgates to evacuate the excess out into the Atlantic.

But in a twist of meteorological fate, amplified by climate change, within three months the opposite was true: a severe El Niño weather phenomenon struck and the canal began imposing cargo restrictions, the Financial Times reports.