Yangtze

The 10 Most Important Water Stories in 2014

pgleick — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 07:54:55 +0000

The 10 Most Important Water Stories in 2014

By Peter Gleick (Pacific Institute) and Carl Ganter (Circle of Blue)

1. The California Drought Becomes an Emergency

California’s multi-year drought grew dire enough in 2014 to prompt Governor Jerry Brown to declare a drought emergency in January. By the end of the year, California had experienced the driest and hottest 36 months in its 119-year instrumental record. Some researchers described the drought as 1) the worst in over 1200 years and 2) evidence of rising temperatures globally as climate changes accelerate. As of mid-January, the drought is continuing.

As the California and western drought continued in 2014, storage reservoirs in the region were drawn down to record lows. "Bathtub rings" around Lake Mead in 2012. In July 2014, Lake Mead reached the lowest levels since the lake was filled in the 1930s. © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue

2. Tigris and Euphrates River Dams Influence Islamic State Expansion

Conflicts over water have a long history. In 2014, a new analysis described the links between drought, climate change, water management, and the Syrian civil war. By the end of the year, the region’s major dams were targeted for control by the Islamic State (IS) and used as weapons to flood parts of Iraq and to divert water away from some communities for political purposes. IS forces near these dams were also targets of allied air strikes because of the dams’ strategic importance.

3. U.S.–China Climate Agreement Includes Water-Energy Provisions

On November 12, 2014, the President of the United States reached a momentous accord with the President of China to cap greenhouse gas emissions and do a whole lot more for Mother Earth and its human inhabitants. The agreement encourages collaboration between the world’s two largest economies to much more quickly put into place new tools, practices, and especially markets to contend with radically different ecological and economic conditions. The agreement includes two provisions to secure freshwater supplies in energy production. The two nations are 1) investing in research to improve efficiency and conservation in water supply for energy generation and 2) developing a carbon-sequestration demonstration project in China to put to good use the water that is displaced from deep beneath the surface during CO₂ storage.

4. The U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act Turns 40 Amid Mounting Safety Lapses

In the year that the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act turned 40, Toledo, Ohio, Charleston, West Virginia, and towns along North Carolina’s Dan River were the victims of pollution incidents that highlighted the continued challenges in safeguarding water supplies and protecting public health. Toledo shut down its water supply after poisonous algae toxins developed in Lake Erie. Charleston’s water supply was fouled by a chemical spill that prompted the Justice Department to indict the plant’s owners for water-quality violations and obstruction of justice. In North Carolina, a storage basin failure at a Duke Energy power plant sent more than 35,000 metric tons of coal ash, a noxious waste product, flowing into the Dan River, a drinking water source.

The Safe Drinking Water Act turned 40 in 2014. Major cities (including New York) all test tap water, which is among the best in the world. But incidents of contamination in major cities highlight the need for expanded vigilance and protection against contaminants. © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue

5. Evidence of the Link between Climate Change and Extreme Hydrologic Events Grows Stronger

The evidence of the links between climate change and extreme hydrologic events grew more powerful in 2014. A series of scientific reports addressed heat waves in Europe, coastal damages in the Eastern United States during extreme tides and storms, flooding in the UK from more intense rain storms, drastic loss of Arctic ice, and droughts in Australia and the Southwestern United States. Lloyd’s of London concluded in May that the influence of rising sea levels increased the damages from Hurricane Sandy by $US 8 billion in New York alone. Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city and located close to the water-rich Amazon Basin, suffered its worst drought.

6. America Becomes More Water-Efficient as U.S. Water Use Drops Dramatically

The United States is using less water nationally – according to the U.S. Geological Survey in a report issued in November. The federal science agency found that water use dropped to 355 billion gallons a day in 2010, the lowest level since 1970. California continues to be a leader in efficiency and conservation. It withdrew 38 billion gallons of water per day in 2010, a 17 percent decrease from 2005, and the lowest tally since 1965. The USGS report updates the last national water supply and use survey, which collected data from 2005, when national water use was 410 billion gallons per day. In effect, a nation of 309 million people in 2010 used as much water as 205 million Americans did 45 years ago.

7. China’s South-North Water Transport Canal Opens

China turned the spigot on the central line of its South-North Water Transfer Project, sending the first gush of water from Danjiangkou Reservoir along the 1,432-kilometer route to Beijing and other cities in the country’s dry North. Together with the transfer project’s eastern line, which began operating in December 2013, and a planned western line, the massive diversion will siphon as much as 44.8 billion cubic meters (11.8 trillion gallons) of water each year from the Yangtze River Basin, according to the state-run news agency Xinhua. It is the largest project of its kind in the world, with a price tag upwards of $US 81 billion.

China - South North Water Transfer project under construction. A second major portion of the line opened in 2014. ©Aaron Jaffe/Circle of BluePhoto

8. Algal Blooms Foul Water Worldwide

Decades of research and billions of dollars spent to understand the causes of toxic algae blooms and oxygen-starved aquatic dead zones around the world have produced more scientific knowledge but achieved few results to solve two of the most dangerous threats to the world’s oceans and fresh water reserves. In fact, according to a growing body of scientific evidence, algae blooms and near-shore ocean dead zones are growing larger and more numerous while endangering important fisheries and drinking water consumed by millions of people.

9. Water-Saving Renewable Energy Technologies Become Mainstream

The Energy Information Administration reported that for the first time solar, wind, and geothermal power sources overtook hydropower in 2014 as the largest sources of renewable electricity in the United States. Wind and solar, which typically require little or no water per unit energy produced, also competed with natural gas as the largest new sources of electrical generating capacity in the United States. Through November, half the new generating capacity came from natural gas while solar and wind accounted for 44 percent, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The transition to water-saving renewable energy is accelerating. Less than a decade ago, U.S. hydropower plants accounted for three times as much generation as non-hydro sources. In 2014, said the EIA, wind, solar, and geothermal energy accounted for just over 6.6 percent of U.S. electricity generation and hydropower accounted for just under 6.6 percent. "By 2040,” said the EIA, “nonhydro renewables are projected to provide more than twice as much generation as hydropower."

10. Water Shutoffs in Detroit Are Factor in Largest U.S. Municipal Bankruptcy

Thousands of residents of Detroit — a city under emergency management that is reeling from decades of deindustrialization and neighborhood decay — were cut off from drinking water supplies last year. Roughly 17,000 residences were shut off between March and August because of overdue bills. Residents pushed back, taking water from fire hydrants to drink, cook, bathe, and flush their toilets, and community leaders organized emergency water deliveries. Meanwhile the accountants, lawyers, and traders collected tens of millions of dollars in fees to complete the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. The problem in Detroit raised questions about whether the shutoff of water violates the UN-declared human right to water, which requires delivery of a basic amount of water independent of ability to pay.

pgleick Mon, 01/19/2015 - 02:54

Climate change, snow and ice, and water resources

pgleick — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:28:44 +0000

Climate change, snow and ice, and water resources

One of the reasons that climate change is such a big issue is because the global climate is an integral part of the Earth’s entire ecosystem, tied to so many of the big and little things that society cares about. Figuring out how all these complicated pieces tie together is hard, as is linking these pieces together in the minds of the public so that we – and our policy makers – can grasp the true implications of a changing climate and plan for them. Because this is so important, I expect that many of my future posts here will address this issue, but let me start with one example: the relationships between climate, snow, ice, and water resources.

Some of my earliest research on climate and water (my doctorate in 1986 evaluated the regional hydrologic impacts of climate change) showed that one of the most critical impacts of climate change would be changes in the snow/rain dynamics in mountains. Since then, more and better research has confirmed and strengthened our understanding of how vulnerable water systems – and especially mountain regions – are to climate changes. Indeed, we already see impacts in the form of disappearing tropical and high-latitude glaciers and ice caps, changing rainfall patterns, and increased water content in the atmosphere, not to mention the growing influence of climate change on the frequency and intensity of some extreme events.

The climate is incredibly complex. But, in fact, many climate impacts are actually pretty simple to understand. Let’s focus for the moment on just one piece of the climate change picture: temperature. We know the Earth is warming up because of human activities. This fact alone would mean that more of the precipitation that falls will be rain and less of it will be snow, even if total precipitation stays the same (it won’t, by the way). Higher temperature also means that what does fall as snow will melt faster and run off earlier into our rivers and streams. And any ice sitting on the ground will melt faster than it would have otherwise.

Snow. Glaciers. Icecaps. All of these are vulnerable to climate change, especially rising temperature. This isn’t theory. It’s fact. In our heavily videoed, satellite-observed, cell-phone-connected world, the evidence can be delivered instantly to the screen you’re looking at right now.

Take the Himalayas. The Hindu Kush-Himalayan region (HKH) spans thousands of miles and seven countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, and Pakistan) *[Ed. oops: eight! See comment #1 below for correction] and contains many of the largest glaciers in the world. The Himalayas are the headwaters of some of the most important rivers as well – including the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, Yellow, and Yangtze. These rivers provide drinking and irrigation water for at least one and a half billion people. A recent assessment by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences offers a comprehensive look at how climate change will affect this region and its water security.

The recent report on climate change and the Himalayan region from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Even with climate change, the HKH region will have glaciers for centuries, but as temperatures rise, the lower elevation glaciers and snow will (and are beginning to) melt, recede, and disappear. In the eastern and central Himalayas, there is evidence that glacial retreat has accelerated over the past century. Black carbon and dust from burning of fossil fuels and wood are also accelerating this effect by darkening snow and ice and absorbing more energy from the sun.

The total amount of water in the rivers downstream may not change much – total flow will depend on how much precipitation overall (rain and snow) falls, especially during the rainy/monsoon seasons. But the timing of those flows is especially vulnerable to climate change – as it is in the western mountains of the United States, including the Rockies and Sierra Nevada. For river flows that are dependent on melting snow and ice, such as the rivers in the eastern Himalayas, the earliest climate change impacts are likely to be changes in the seasonality of flows, with increases in winter flows (as more precipitation falls as rain instead of snow, and as existing ice and snow melt faster) and then decreases in summer flows.

Because of the physical and climatological complexity of this huge region, the ultimate impacts of climate changes are complex and still incompletely understood. More basic science is needed – for example, even estimates of the total area of glaciers in the HKH region vary by almost a factor of two. But not everything is equally uncertain (a point often lost, by the way, on those who prefer to emphasize what we don’t know over what we do know).

The eastern Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau are already warming, especially at higher elevations. Glacial retreat, especially in the central and eastern Himalayas, is already occurring and likely to accelerate. Lower elevation glaciers are disappearing faster than higher (and colder) ones. Black carbon and soot are contributing to faster ice melt. In the near term, some rivers may see increases in flow as ice melt grows. In the longer run, most regional rivers are likely to see changes in the timing of flows, with a concomitant change in flood and drought risks. And rising temperatures are also likely to increase evapotranspiration rates over large parts of the irrigated areas of the region’s major river basins, increasing total demand for water in places where demands already exceed supply in many part of the year and where food production is critical. These are the regions likely to be on the front line of any challenges to water resources from climate change.

Closer to home (for those readers in the western hemisphere), keep a close eye on the water towers of our own water supplies: the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and the Alps. Expect to see rising snowlines. Expect growing winter flows and flood risks as snow turns to rain and decreasing summer flows as the snow disappears earlier and earlier in the year. Expect to see our own (much smaller) glaciers shrink and disappear, as is already happening in Glacier National Park. [In a straight-faced comment on the Glacier National Park website, the National Park Service states:

“Despite the recession of current glaciers, the park's name will not change when the glaciers are gone.”

Maybe that’s fitting: disappearing or no glaciers in Glacier National Park will be a mark of our failure to act.

In the end, significant climate changes will occur because we’ve taken too long to acknowledge and react to the problem. And that means unavoidable impacts for water resources (and other things), and inevitable adaptation and reaction. But planning and acting now can still reduce the worst consequences later. There are plenty of things we can do, including improved water-use efficiency, better planning for floods and droughts, more sophisticated reservoir operations, and stronger institutions to manage water and reduce water conflicts. More on these options later.

Peter Gleick

pgleick Wed, 02/20/2013 - 05:28