I believe that water is the closest thing to a god we have here on earth. We are in awe of its power and majestic beauty. We are drawn to it as if it's a magical, healing force. We gestate in it, are made of it, and need to drink it to live. We are living in it. ― Alex Z. Moores
The climate crisis is all about water. Climate change alters global atmospheric circulation. The difference in circulation alters precipitation and evaporation in large parts of the world and, consequently, the amount of river water used locally. A new study from the Vienna University of Technology has found that the water crisis has been underestimated and is more severe than we thought.
Atmospheric disruption changes the winds that disperse rainfall and heat from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The result is a crisis of flooding, drought, deglaciation, changes in snow and rainfall patterns even in the Arctic and Antarctica, and wildfires. Only one percent of all the water on earth is available for terrestrial life; the rest is locked in glacial ice or the oceans. A new study has found that there is even less water than we thought available.
Climate change alters the global atmospheric circulation, which in turn alters precipitation and evaporation in large parts of the world and, consequently, the amount of river water used locally.
Water distribution patterns allowed the ancestors from twelve thousand years ago to build the civilizational life we know today. With consistent rainfall, early humans could create agriculture; it was no longer necessary to survive only as a hunter-gatherer.
The presser from Vienna University of Technolgy:
...new data analyses conducted under the leadership of Prof. Günter Blöschl (TU Wien, Vienna) indicate that previous models systematically underestimate how sensitively water availability reacts to certain changing climate parameters. An analysis of measurement data from over 9,500 hydrological catchments from all over the world shows that climate change can lead to local water crises to an even greater extent than previously expected. The results have now been published in the journal Nature Water.
"In the climatology community, the effects of climate change on the atmosphere are very well understood. However, their local consequences on rivers and the availability of water falls into the field of hydrology," explains Prof. Günter Blöschl from the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management at TU Wien.
Locally, it is often possible to explain very well how water availability is related to external parameters such as precipitation or temperature—this is being studied at many measuring stations around the world, in particular in Blöschl's hydrology laboratory in Petzenkirchen, where numerous sensors have been installed over an area of 60 hectares.
But global conclusions cannot be drawn from such individual observations: "How the water balance depends on external parameters varies from place to place; local vegetation also plays a very important role here," says Günter Blöschl. It is difficult to develop a simple physical model that can be used to calculate these interrelationships at all places in the world with precision.
Hydrologists from Saudi Arabia, the United States, China, and Australia collaborated on the study published in Nature Water. They concluded that water supplies in Africa, Australia, and the Western United States are at significant risk.
"So we don't base our analysis on physical models, but on actual measurements," Günter Blöschl emphasizes. "We look at how much the amount of available water changed in the past when external conditions changed. In this way we can find out how sensitively changes in climate parameters are related to a change in local water availability. And this allows us to make predictions for a future, warmer climate."
And it turned out that the connection between precipitation and the amount of water in the rivers is much more sensitive than was previously thought—and thus much more sensitive than is assumed in the models currently used to predict climate change.
Unrelated to the study, CNN identified the twelve cities most at risk of running out of water in the near term are Sao Paulo, Bangalore, Beijing, Cairo, Jakarta, Moscow, Istanbul, Mexico City, London, Tokyo, and Miami. Not all of these cities' water crises are due to changes in the atmosphere. In Moscow, the culprit is pollution contamination. In Miami, saltwater intrusion. Tokyo relies on the rain that falls primarily in only four months out of the year.
In 2016, Reveal wrote about secret cables released by Wikileaks that prove without a doubt governments know that we are running out of water. Regarding climate hydrological impacts, the secrecy of the looming apocalypse is the norm. The cable links are provided in Reveal.
Secret conversations between American diplomats show how a growing water crisis in the Middle East destabilized the region, helping spark civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and how those water shortages are spreading to the United States.
Classified U.S. cables reviewed by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting show a mounting concern by global political and business leaders that water shortages could spark unrest across the world, with dire consequences.
Many of the cables read like diary entries from an apocalyptic sci-fi novel.
“Water shortages have led desperate people to take desperate measures with equally desperate consequences,” according to a 2009 cable sent by U.S. Ambassador Stephen Seche in Yemen as water riots erupted across the country.
The classified diplomatic cables, made public years ago by Wikileaks, now are providing fresh perspective on how water shortages have helped push Syria and Yemen into civil war, and prompted the king of neighboring Saudi Arabia to direct his country’s food companies to scour the globe for farmland. Since then, concerns about the world’s freshwater supplies have only accelerated.
It’s not just government officials who are worried. In 2009, U.S. Embassy officers visited Nestle’s headquarters in Switzerland, where company executives, who run the world’s largest food company and are dependent on freshwater to grow ingredients, provided a grim outlook of the coming years. An embassy official cabled Washington with the subject line, “Tour D’Horizon with Nestle: Forget the Global Financial Crisis, the World Is Running Out of Fresh Water.”
We are not remotely ready and have decided collective suicide is the path to take.
Mní wičhóni.
Water is life.