Have I mentioned lately that the primary vector for the human impacts of climate change will be water? If not, consider it said, and here’s some recent news with details:
India’s thirst is making us all wet:
One nation’s thirst for groundwater is having an impact on global sea levels. Satellite measurements show that northern India is sucking some 54 trillion litres of water out of the ground every year. This is threatening a major water crisis and adding to global sea level rise.
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The data revealed that groundwater under northern India and its surroundings is being extracted exceptionally fast. Tiwari and colleagues calculate that between 2002 and 2008 an average of 54 cubic kilometres – enough to fill more than 21 million Olympic swimming pools – was lost every year. Boreholes in the region show the water table is dropping by around 10 centimetres a year (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2009gl039401).
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The “lost” water doesn’t just disappear, though. Most of it runs into the oceans. The team calculates that it could be pushing up global sea levels by as much as 0.16 millimetres each year. That’s 5 per cent of total sea level rise.
Yes, you read that right: Fifty-four cubic kilometers of water per year.
Kashmir glaciers shrinking at ‘alarming’ speed:
Rising winter temperatures are shrinking Himalayan glaciers in Indian Kashmir at “alarming” speeds, threatening water supplies to vast tracts of India and Pakistan, according to a new study.
The Kolahoi glacier, the largest in the region, has shrunk by 2.63 square kilometers (one square mile) in the past three decades to just over 11 square kilometers, said the study presented at a three-day international workshop on climate change that began Monday in the Kashmiri summer capital Srinagar.
Himalayan glaciers feed into Asia’s nine largest rivers that flow to China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar.
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“Other small Kashmir glaciers are also shrinking and the main reason is that the winter temperature in Kashmir is rising,” said the study, citing an increase of 1.1 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years.
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“If you talk about Kashmir and you look at the statistics of climate change, it is melting faster here than any other place in the world,” said Sally Dotre, an expert from Cambridge University.
“And that’s going to have a dramatic effect in Kashmir and Pakistan, because it is already affecting water levels,” Dotre said.
Water levels in almost all the rivers in Indian Kashmir have decreased by two-thirds during the last 40 years.
California Tries to Solve Water Woes:
In a sign that a deal addressing California’s longstanding water supply problems may be near, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger convened a special session of the Legislature on Monday to revisit a package of water bills.
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Yet many factors have made the need to fix California’s water system problems all the more pressing.
The drought has led to water restrictions and increased prices for water around the state. And along with the drought, a federal order last year forcing water authorities to curtail the use of large pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to help preserve dying smelt has reduced water flows to agriculture and resulted in dust-bowl-like conditions for many of the state’s farms. In 2008, over 100,000 acres of the 4.7 million acres in the Central Valley were left unplanted, and experts expect that number to grow this year.
In addition, environmental problems in the Sacramento River have resulted in a collapse of the Chinook salmon population, closing salmon season off the coast of California and much of Oregon for two years in a row.
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Another disputed piece of the negotiations involves the monitoring of groundwater levels. Without monitoring groundwater usage, it is impossible to tell whether aquifers are being stressed, which can lead to weakened levees and damage to the surrounding environment. As the drought has persisted, tapping into groundwater supplies has increased, especially among farmers — and in some areas, state officials say, dangerously so.
While roughly 70 percent of the state’s water districts voluntarily measure groundwater levels, reporting the levels is not mandatory, and Democrats had sought to make it so. Republican lawmakers staunchly opposed state government “trespassing” on private property to do so. A compromise would make a water district’s failure to voluntarily report levels result in the loss of billions of dollars from state bonds.
Some Coal Plants Cleanse the Air at the Expense of Waterways:
For years, residents here complained about the yellow smoke pouring from the tall chimneys of the nearby coal-fired power plant, which left a film on their cars and pebbles of coal waste in their yards. Five states — including New York and New Jersey — sued the plant’s owner, Allegheny Energy, claiming the air pollution was causing respiratory diseases and acid rain.
So three years ago, when Allegheny Energy decided to install scrubbers to clean the plant’s air emissions, environmentalists were overjoyed. The technology would spray water and chemicals through the plant’s chimneys, trapping more than 150,000 tons of pollutants each year before they escaped into the sky.
But the cleaner air has come at a cost. Each day since the equipment was switched on in June, the company has dumped tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater containing chemicals from the scrubbing process into the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to 350,000 people and flows into Pittsburgh, 40 miles to the north.
Experts warn rainfall may triple in 20 years:
Researchers monitoring climate change at the Academia Sinica suggested yesterday that the government and people of Taiwan take measures and precautions to avoid suffering devastation from natural disasters like typhoons and ensuing flooding.
The researchers said the continuing global warming and climate change will not only increase the frequency of torrential rains and floods but will also escalate the extensive damages.
They warned that heavy rains dumped on the island could intensify by three times within a period of 20 years.
Water Issues Dividing and Challenging the U.S.:
With floods across the Midwest, droughts along the Southwest, and legal inter-state skirmishes in the West and South—water issues are dividing the United States and challenging its citizens like never before. As first reported by Circle of Blue in July 2008, increasing competition for diminishing water supplies is driving the United States into an era of water scarcity.
Forecasts suggest that climate change will only worsen the challenges of obtaining and maintaining enough freshwater for the country’s needs. Fortunately, scientists are providing new tools to figure out how quickly our liquid assets are being depleted, and developing models that make better use of the water we have.
Follow Circle of Blue’s continuing coverage of water scarcity and management challenges — and solutions — as the United States grapples with one of the most complex, yet universal struggles of the century.
Follow the above link to access the relates stories.
Mississippi vs. Tennessee: Billion-dollar Supreme Court Question, “Is Memphis Stealing Water?”:
In February 2005, the state of Mississippi filed its first complaint that the city of Memphis was stealing water from the 7,000 square miles of the Memphis Sands aquifer that lies beneath Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee, according to The Commercial Appeal of Memphis. Three years later in February 2008, U.S. District Judge Glen H. Davidson dismissed the lawsuit because the state of Tennessee was not included in the league of defendants.
In June 2009, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed the judge’s dismissal because Tennessee is an “indispensable party.” The district court ruled that the shared aquifer was an inter-state issue, and thus must be heard by the Supreme Court.
Mississippi filed a suit with the Supreme Court in September 2009 against Memphis and the Memphis Light, Gas, and Water (MLGW) utility–the largest three-service utility in the U.S.– seeking damages of one billion dollars.
According to court reports filed by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, Memphis is “the largest city in the world that relies solely on groundwater wells for its water supply.” More than one million Memphis residents depend on the 160 million gallons per day pumped by from the Memphis Sand aquifer–60 million gallons of which Mississippi claims is stolen property.
Memphis and MLGW argue that the withdrawals are appropriate and within the limits. If they lose, the utility will be forced to build a multi-million dollar water treatment plant for subsequent future withdrawals from the Mississippi River.
Georgia and Tennessee: 200 Years of a Tennessee River Toss-up:
In February 2008, the Georgia General Assembly passed a bill to move the Georgia-Tennessee border one mile north—the fourth attempt since the line was established in 1818. The latitudinal change would mean a portion of the Tennessee River would be included within Georgia’s boundary— providing a viable source of drinking water for 3.5 million residents of Atlanta.
According to The New York Times, Congress set the 35th parallel as Tennessee’s southern border in 1796. But Georgia claims that due to equipment failures the actual line drawn up by surveyors in 1818 was located one mile south of the projected latitude. Although Tennessee enacted these coordinates into its state law, Georgia never endorsed the border and attempted in the 1880’s, 1940’s, and again in the 1970’s to reconstitute the “correct” border.
The next step in this borderline issue would be for Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue to negotiate with Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, reported The Christian Science Monitor. However, most government officials agree that the issue will end up in the Supreme Court.
Moving the border would make 50 square miles of Tennessee now a part of Georgia, including a bend of the Tennessee River near Nickajack Cave in Marion County.
America’s Water Supply: Scarcity Becoming Endemic:
Americans have good reason to be concerned about the future of the nation’s supply of clean fresh water, according to state and federal research and resource agencies.
The U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly online report produced by the Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, notes in its latest assessment that one-third of the continental United States is suffering abnormally dry or drought conditions.
Drought conditions grip more than half of the West, with little change from the same time last year. The hardest-hit areas include California, in its third year of a statewide drought, and Arizona, which has been experiencing abnormally dry or drought conditions since August .
Groundwater resources, which provide half of the country’s drinking water as well as irrigation for crops and water for industrial use, also are diminishing, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Groundwater Resources Program. The Ogallala Aquifer, the massive groundwater network that lies under the Great Plains and feeds water to more than a quarter of the region’s irrigated land, continues to be a significant concern.
“Basically the groundwater is being depleted of its resource,” said Kevin Dennehy, the USGS project coordinator. “It’s been happening for quite some time and it’s going to continue to happen. The removal of water from the aquifer is at a greater rate than water is being re-charged in the aquifer naturally.”
Australia’s Adelaide: A Lesson for Urban Centers Facing the Global Water Crisis:
Australia’s fifth largest city, Adelaide, could see its 1.3 million inhabitants rely more and more on bottled water over the next year, according to local politicians. Mounting consequences of climate change and sluggish national political action have led to high salinity levels and depletion of wildlife along the River Murray.
Some senators in the South Australia province have predicted that the city will be forced to import water and completely depend on bottled water, The Guardian reported two weeks ago.
Ironically these reports from Adelaide came just days after fellow Australian city, Bundanoon, located on the eastern coast of the New South Wales province, put a ban on bottled water.
“It’s a city of more than 1 million people that gets 70 percent of its water on average from the River Murray, but the Murray-Darling basin has been on decline for decades” said James Pittock, a PhD scholar in Integrating management of rivers and climate change at Australian National University (ANU). Pittock was on holiday along the Murray-Darling Basin when CoB caught up with him over the phone.
