Water Spouts will speak volubly and endlessly about all the issues concerning water. The ongoing degradation, and growing scarcity, of the water supply here in the US, and the rest of the world. The continued absence of potable water in so many parts of the world. The work being done by NGOs, and charities, in the third world, to help alleviate the situation. The emphasis on WASH ( Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene ) so health and healthy water are maintained. "Water Spouts" will spout it all out.
SPURS Chief Scientist Ray Schmitt has been thinking about the salt in the ocean for a long time. He did his PhD thesis on an unusual form of mixing called “salt fingers,” which we will discuss in a later post. This small scale mixing process led him to consider the origins of the ocean salinity contrasts that we see around the world.
It’s fairly obvious that salty waters arise from high evaporation regions and fresher waters originate from high rainfall areas or river flows into the ocean. But it turns out that accurate estimates of evaporation and rainfall over the ocean were hard to come by. For a long time, it was a relatively neglected research topic. Many meteorologists were only concerned about how much it rained on land and few seemed to care if it rained on the ocean. Pulling together the best data he could, Ray found that, in fact, the ocean completely dominated the global water cycle. The terrestrial part, so important to us on a daily basis, is a much smaller piece. The oceans hold 97 percent of the Earths free water, the atmosphere only 0.001 percent. The oceans provide 86 percent of global evaporation and receive 78 percent of all rainfall. The total of all river flows into the ocean sums to less than 10 percent of global ocean evaporation. Clearly, if one wants to find out what the water cycle is doing, one should be looking at the oceans. The traditional fixation on the terrestrial water cycle is understandable, but risks missing the big picture. It seems that the tail is wagging the dog in terms of research on the global water cycle!
A traditional view of the water cycle.
The oceanographers’ view of the water cycle.
Of course, one of the most important questions for climate change is what the water cycle will do with continued warming. Basic physics tells us that a warmer atmosphere will hold more water vapor, so an intensified water cycle is expected. Oceanographers should be able to assess any trend in the water cycle if we do a good job in monitoring ocean salinity. On land, man has altered every watershed with dams, groundwater irrigation, deforestation and human consumption. But the ocean’s mostly unaltered and its salinity field provides insight into the vast majority of the pristine natural water cycle. The ocean has its own rain gauge in the form of salinity, and our task in SPURS is to learn how to read it.
The combination of the global coverage from Aquarius for surface salinity, detailed process studies in the ocean like SPURS, and sophisticated high-resolution computer models working in concert open up the oceanic water cycle to careful scientific examination.
Aquarius salinity data from the first week of September 2012.
A SPURS Waveglider begins its journey to study upper ocean salinity.
We are begging to deploy the array of instruments on the ship and they are starting their year-long mission to examine the ocean salinity variations. Our challenge is to understand the detailed picture of salinity that will be painted by the various sensors and to make sense of this in the larger picture of the global water cycle.
The Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji, is functionally extinct. And the Yangtze River porpoise, or jiangzhu, seems set to meet the same fate. For all we know, the law of the survival of the fittest is at work here.
But is it? Doesn't evolution usually take thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years to have its effects? The Yangtze River, according to many experts, is 45 million years old. The baiji evolved about 20 millions years later. It took another 5 million years for it to swim from the Pacific Ocean into the Yangtze and make its permanent home there. Yet it has only taken a few decades for it to become functionally extinct.
Many would argue that almost the same fate befell the dodos and yet the world hasn't been any poorer for it.
The main value of the Yangtze is its water (and fish), they would say. It still carries millions of cubic meters of water every year, slaking the thirst of the land and its people.
So what if it runs wild at times?
There would have been no cause for worry if China had enough fresh water to meet its demands.
But how could China possibly be running out of water? Look at its great rivers and giant lakes and the massive glaciers the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is home to. And don't forget the torrents of water it receives when the heavens open up, as we saw in Beijing on July 21. And remember China is sixth from the top on the global list of water resources.
Yet the fact remains that China, like many other countries, faces a water shortage that threatens to slow down its socio-economic development.
The problem is not new. But the country's changing demographics and fast paced economic development have made it more complex.
For instance, despite having the sixth largest reserve (resource) of water, China's per capita availability of freshwater is only one-fourth of the world average. Also, the demand for water in China has increased many fold in the past three decades, thanks to its high rate of economic development and urbanization.
The lion's share of the water used in China goes to agriculture. In fact, the agriculture sector accounts for two-thirds of the water used in the country. Perhaps modern technology can reduce farmers' reliance on water. But will that be enough?
If the demographics have changed, so has the climate. Droughts or drought-like conditions have becoming more frequent, proving a drag on the country's economy. Floods, too, have harmed the country's economic growth.
This lopsided focus on GDP and other economic indicators is precisely where the trouble lies. We place too much importance on economic graphs and economic growth rates. We seem to believe that we can make do with bottled water if tap water is in short supply.
China has achieved great things on many fronts. Its economy has boomed for more than three decades. It is still booming compared with the rest of the world. It has pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. But it still cannot guarantee later generations will have enough water.
The United Nations climate negotiations will resume in Bangkok on Aug 30 and continue until Sept 5. Experts fear that the average temperature could increase by up to 6C by the end of this century, making the planet unlivable. The "informal" negotiations may not necessarily have a bearing on the formal UN Climate Change Conference scheduled for November in Doha, Qatar, but their focus again seems to be on abstract topics such as carbon trade and countries' commitment to tackling climate change rather than concrete things such as the availability of water.
Of course, rising temperatures will be discussed, but the talks leave no room for water, even though it could be almost "functionally" unavailable by the turn of this century if we do not stop wasting it now.
What has been the elixir of life for millenniums, it seems, has come to be taken for granted. And that is dangerous.
Water is the fundamental ingredient for life on Earth. Looking at our Earth from space, with its vast and deep ocean, it appears as though there is an abundance of water for our use. However, only a small portion of Earth's water is accessible for our needs.
How did a handful of corporations steal our water?
Water
is the very essence of life, sustaining every being on the planet.
'Flow' confronts the disturbing reality that our crucial resource is
dwindling and greed just may be the cause.
Everyone is entitled
to water as they are air. Water is fundamental to life. Farmers need
water to grow their crops and animals. An economy needs water to grow.
India is home to three major river systems — the Ganges,
Brahmaputra and the Indus — which support 700 million people. As an
upstream nation, it controls water flows to Bangladesh to the east and
Pakistan to the west. The Indus supplies some 80 percent of Pakistan’s
irrigated land.
India and Pakistan are both building hydropower dams in disputed
Kashmir along Kishanganga river. Pakistan fears India’s dams will
disrupt water flows.
India, for its part, is concerned that China is building dams along the Tsangpo river, which runs into India as the Brahmaputra.
CENTRAL ASIA
Central Asia is one of the world’s driest places, where, thanks
to 70 years of Soviet planning, growing thirsty crops such as cotton and
grain remain the main source of income for most people.
Disputes over water use from the Syr Daria and Amu Daria rivers
have increased since independence in 1991. Problems are compounded by
rising nationalism and lack of progress on a regional approach to
replace Soviet-era systems of water management.
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan need more water for
growing populations and farming, while economically weaker Kyrgyzstan
and Tajikistan want more control for hydropower and irrigation.
Afghanistan, linked to Central Asia by the Amu Daria, is claiming its own share of the water.
NILE BASIN
The countries of the Nile basin are Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan,
Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi,
Rwanda and Tanzania.
Egypt and Sudan control more than 90 percent of the Nile’s waters
due to colonial-era and other treaties but others in the basin want a
bigger share.
Demand for irrigation has risen, with millions of hectares leased
for large-scale farming. Dams have complicated access to water.
Water needs are expected to rise as the Nile basin population is
projected to reach 654 million by 2030, up from 372 million in 2005,
according to UN estimates.
TIGRIS-EUPHRATES RIVER SYSTEM
The Tigris-Euphrates basin is mainly shared by Turkey, Syria and Iraq, with many Tigris tributaries originating in Iran.
Iraq, struggling with water shortages due to aridity and years of
drought, says hydroelectric dams and irrigation in Turkey, Iran and
Syria have reduced the water flow in both rivers.
Increasing desertification, especially in Iraq, is compounding
problems. A large amount of Euphrates’ waters evaporate due to extreme
heat. Contamination from pesticides, discharge of untreated sewage and
excess salinity due to low water levels are all common.
Iraq, Syria and Iran want more equitable access and control from
Turkey, where almost 98 percent of Euphrates waters originate. Despite
some cooperation on common management, a final agreement has yet to be
reached.
JORDAN RIVER BASIN
The river basin is highly stressed due to aridity in Jordan, Israel and Palestinian Territories.
All three discharge untreated or poorly treated sewage. The
Mountain Aquifer – a key fresh water source for West Bank Palestinians
and major Israeli cities – is threatened by decades of over-exploitation
and groundwater pollution.
Despite efforts to cooperate, agreements to share water resources
are complicated by the long-stalled Middle East peace process. Israel
dominates the Palestinian water economy.
MEKONG RIVER BASIN
Most Mekong countries, especially China, have been planning and building hydropower dams since the late 1980s.
Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam argue that China diverts or
stores more than its fair share of water due to dam-building on the
Upper Mekong.
There is growing concern about serious environmental damage to
agriculture, fisheries and food security for some 60 million people due
to plans by Laos and Cambodia to build more than 10 dams along the Lower
Mekong.
Despite cooperation efforts by Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and
Vietnam through the Mekong River Commission, national interests are
getting in the way of joint river management.
I keep writing about how much planning I’m doing behind the scenes. One of the units we’ll be doing this year is on water. As I was searching through various resources I came across this really beautiful poster of the Water Cycle. We will hang this and the one below in our homeschool room. I just wanted to share these links in case anyone else might find it useful for their homeschool room or classroom at school.
You can request your own free poster/s from the US Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service. It took just a few days for ours to arrive. I’ll let you see the poster below and will place the link below that.
A year or so ago, Brenda over at Homeschool Bits told everyone about a World of Pollinators poster. The 2012 pollinators poster is now out. It’s called Pollinator Pathways. It is also offered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
If you want more information about pollinators, you might be interested in this Pollinator Information Pack. It’s a pdf download which explains why pollinators are so important since they are crucial to the production of fruit, nuts, berries and more.
This map shows global soil moisture for August 2010 as measured by
ESA’s SMOS mission. Oranges and yellows represent dry soils, while blues
are more moist. (Credit: ESA)
Water held in soil plays an important role in the climate system. The
dataset released by ESA is the first remote-sensing soil moisture data
record spanning the period 1978 to 2010 -- a predecessor of the data now
being provided by ESA's SMOS mission.
The datasets are now available to the science community for feedback analyses and climate model validation.
The amount of water held in global soils makes up only about 0.001% of the total water found on Earth.
It is crucial for plant growth, but is also linked to our weather and
climate. This is because soil moisture is a key variable controlling
the exchange of water and energy between the land and the atmosphere:
dry soil emits little or no moisture to the atmosphere.
The water cycle
A recently detected decline in the global evaporation trend could,
for example, directly be explained by limited moisture supply.
The relationship between soil moisture and the climate system is not
yet fully understood, and global long-term soil moisture observations
have so far not been available. That means the evaluation of climate
models with regard to the drying and wetting trends and associated
feedbacks with temperature is still difficult in many regions worldwide.
In 2009, ESA launched a dedicated satellite mission, SMOS, that
provides high quality and direct measurements of soil surface soil
moisture. While the key applications for SMOS data are weather
forecasting, hydrology and water management, the mission also provides
data in near-real time for operational applications.
However, to address the current lack of historical long-term soil
moisture data for climate applications, ESA has also been supporting the
development of a global soil moisture data record derived by merging
measurements acquired in the past by a series of previous and current
European and US satellites.
These activities were initiated within the Water Cycle Multi-mission
Observation Strategy project, led by ITC (The Netherlands), inside ESA's
Support To Science Element programme. The activities are now being
continued and refined in the context of the Climate Change Initiative.
ESA is announcing the release of the first soil moisture climate data record spanning the period 1978 to 2010.
The 32 years of data allow for a robust calculation of the
climatology, which in turn can be used to calculate anomalies. For
example, areas of drying are evident, such as in the central US in 2005,
Brazil and East Africa in the summer of 2007, southern China in the
winter of 2009-10 and in 2010 in Russia.
Flooding is also evident, such as in Afghanistan in 1992, East Africa
in 1998-99, Morocco in 2008 and the 2010-11 Queensland floods in
Australia.
The data record was generated by merging two soil moisture datasets.
The first is based on active microwave datasets processed by the Vienna
University of Technology and is based on observations from the C-band
scatterometers on Europe's ERS-1, ERS-2 and MetOp-A satellites.
The other dataset was generated by the Vrije University of Amsterdam
in collaboration with NASA, based on passive microwave observations from
the Nimbus-7, DMSP, TRMM and Aqua missions.
The harmonisation of these datasets aimed to take advantage of both
types of microwave techniques but proved difficult owing to sensor
degradation, drifts in calibration and algorithmic changes in the
processing systems.
Challenges also included guaranteeing consistency between the soil
moisture data retrieved from the different active and passive microwave
instruments.
Since this is the first release of such a product, an active
cooperation of the remote sensing and climate modelling communities is
required to validate the satellite data jointly to understand modelling
results better.
Scientists worldwide can now download, use, validate the dataset and
provide feedback to the scientific team for further improvements. Users
can register to access the data at www.esa-soilmoisture-cci.org.
SMOS soil moisture index
As a next step, SMOS will ensure the continuity of the dataset. In
addition, NASA's SMAP mission is planned for launch in November 2014.
Tom Bragg (left) of Sunpro Inc. works on filling his
truck as Gary Wortman (right) takes off the filler hose from his truck
after filling up with water at a Chesapeake Energy Corporation fresh
water collection station in Carroll County, Ohio. (Mike CardewAkron
Beacon Journal)
Lea Harper of Senecaville is on the warpath.
The southeast Ohio
resident is upset that the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District,
which collects surface water from Akron’s south side all the way to
Marietta on the Ohio River, is selling water from one of its reservoirs
to Gulfport Energy Corp. for natural gas drilling.
That water from
Clendening Reservoir in Harrison County could be just the beginning of a
huge drain on Ohio’s water resources, she said. Hundreds of billions of
gallons are at stake, not only because of its immediate effect on lakes
and rivers, but also perhaps a permanent effect on water supplies.
Chesapeake
Energy Corp., for example, the most active driller in the state, is
interested in the watershed’s Leesville Reservoir about 20 miles south
of Canton.
Paul Feezel of Carroll Concerned Citizens, a
grass-roots group in Carroll County where drilling is heaviest,
estimates that the water needed to supply Ohio’s annual drilling needs
could drain two thirds of Leesville Reservoir annually.
In all,
the conservancy district has requests for water from a dozen drilling
companies that are eager to tap six reservoirs in eastern Ohio:
Clendening, Leesville and Tappan Lake in Harrison County; Atwood Lake in
Carroll and Tuscarawas counties; Piedmont Lake in Belmont and Harrison
counties and Seneca Lake in Noble and Guernsey counties.
But the
conservancy is not the only source: Drillers are buying water from
communities, private pond owners, water districts and private water
companies, as well as pulling free water from Ohio streams.
“I’m
just flabbergasted and appalled that Ohioans are willing to see their
water future disappear,” said Harper, who heads the Southeast Ohio
Alliance to Save Our Water, a grass-roots group.
Billions of gallons needed
Ohio
has plenty of water and can furnish the water needed for drilling to
help boost Ohio’s economy, state officials say. The water needed by
drillers is just a drop in the bucket.
Ohio typically uses 8.7
billion gallons per day from surface and underground supplies, according
to state data. Electric power plants are the biggest users alone using
6.5 billion gallons daily, according to 2010 data.
In comparison, it will take an entire year for natural gas drilling to consume about 5.2 billion gallons in Ohio.
Water,
sand and chemicals are mixed and forced into wells under high pressure
to fracture the earth, releasing natural gas. Water also is used to
prepare cement that lines the wells, mix chemicals and control dust on
roads.
Each natural gas well in Ohio needs 2 million to 6 million
gallons of fresh water, the state says. The initial Ohio wells generally
took 5 million to 6 million gallons.
That’s about as much as 50
four-person households would consume over the course of a year. On the
other hand, in one day the city of Akron typically uses 34.66 million
gallons from its reservoirs — enough to frack six wells.
If Ohio’s
quest for natural gas plays out over the next 20 to 40 years, it is
estimated that 120 billion to 200 billion gallons of water could be
needed — more than Akron is likely to deliver to its customers in 95
years.
In water-poor western states like Texas, Oklahoma,
Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming, that has become a problem. Even in
central Pennsylvania, which typically is not considered a dry area,
drilling has been curtailed because drought has reduced water levels in
the Susquehanna River and its tributaries.
Multiple concerns
Harper
said she is troubled by the heavy use of a limited fresh-water
resource, the threat of contamination, the threat to recreation on the
lakes and whether it is right that a public agency be making a profit
off water sales.
The district, she says, was created to prevent flooding and to conserve water, not to profit from water sales to drillers.
“It’s
one of our greatest resources and we’re giving it away,” she said.
“We’re supporting a risky and exploitative industry. We need to fight
this. It’s not sustainable. This is a big issue that’s getting bigger. …
It’s a problem that not enough people are paying attention to. We have
to take a stand.”
No one is monitoring such withdrawals or
tracking the cumulative impacts of providing billions of gallons of
water to drillers, she said.
Her group and other grass-root groups
across eastern Ohio joined Saturday as a show of force when they
rallied before a meeting of the conservancy district’s court in New
Philadelphia.
Early stages of demand
The 18-county
conservancy district — it covers 20 percent of Ohio stretching from the
Ohio River to parts of Summit, Medina and Wayne counties — has defended
its actions and says it is doing nothing wrong in selling water to
drillers and boosting economic development, said spokesman Darrin
Lautenschleger.
Ohio has plenty of water to handle drillers’
requests now and in the future, said Ted Lozier of the Ohio Department
of Natural Resources’ Division of Soil and Water Resources.
The amount being requested by drillers may sound like a large volume of water, he said.
“But, relatively speaking, it’s not much at all,” he said.
He
added: “Ohio has definitely been blessed with rich water resources …
and we don’t see this being a problem. We have more than enough supply
to handle drilling.”
He acknowledged that if there were a
sustained drought, there could be a need for alternate sources. Drillers
cannot take water from Lake Erie or streams that feed into Lake Erie
under Great Lakes rules.
Like Ohio officials, Chesapeake considers
water availability in Ohio to be a non-issue, but the company works
with federal, state and local agencies to assure there are no negative
impacts from its water withdrawals, said company spokesman Pete
Kenworthy.
Water is lost
Environmentalists are not convinced
there is no problem, especially in light of the fact that Ohio could be
looking at tens of thousands of wells in the coming years. And those
wells will be fracked multiple times over the years.
When the
fresh water goes down into the well, it comes out polluted with
dissolved solids, toxic chemicals used in the fracking process, heavy
metals and even low levels of radiation from the rock.
A few
companies like Chesapeake Energy are starting to recycle that wastewater
and reuse it in future drilling. A Canadian company wants to frack with
propane, not water. Both ideas would require less fresh water.
But at the moment, most of the wastewater is injected below ground in Ohio’s 176 injection wells for permanent disposal.
That
means that the water is lost from the fresh water cycle, said critic
Sara Rollet Gosman, a water resources attorney with the National
Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes office in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Unlike
water used by agriculture and industry, water used in fracking
disappears from the hydrological cycle and cannot be used again, she
said.
That’s where the numbers take on new meaning.
If the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is correct — that somewhere between
70 billion and 140 billion gallons of water were used in 2011 alone in
fracking an estimated 35,000 wells across the country — much of that
water may be forever removed from life cycle of the earth’s surface.
“It’s
different than other traditional water withdrawals,” she said. “It is a
100 percent consumptive use. The water is basically pretty much lost
and gone forever.”
One environmental group, Food & Water
Watch, has called for a ban on fracking because of the growing threat to
drinking-water supplies.
Fracking poses “serious, long-term risks
to vital water resources,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of
Food & Water Watch, a group based in Washington, D.C., in a
statement in March.
Another group, American Rivers, has expressed major concerns on fracking and its impact on streams.
Finding sources
At present, drillers are finding multiple sources, from free water in Ohio streams to buying from community water systems.
Chesapeake Energy tries to get its water as close as possible to the well to minimize transport costs.
“We
look to all potential water sources whether it be from landowners,
businesses or municipalities,” said Chesapeake’s Kenworthy.
Companies
are contracting with a number of Ohio municipalities, among them
Louisville, Steubenville, Cambridge, Cadiz, Salem, Jefferson County and
the Buckeye Water District in Columbiana County.
In February,
Chesapeake signed a five-year contract with Steubenville to buy as much
as 700,000 gallons a day from the University Boulevard reservoir that is
filled with water pumped from the Ohio River.
The Oklahoma-based
firm and the No. 1 player in Ohio’s Utica shale pays $5 per 1,000
gallons of raw river, treated wastewater or treated drinking water. That
means that Steubenville earns up to $120,000 a month in Chesapeake
water sales.
Such sales now make it impossible to track how much
water drillers are using in Ohio because the water shows up in state
data as municipal water usage, not for drilling, said eco-advocate
Teresa Mills of Center for Health, Environment and Justice in Columbus.
“I don’t see how we will ever get the true picture of how much water is being destroyed by this industry,” she said.
Under
Senate Bill 315, Ohio’s newly passed law on drilling, drillers will
have to disclose their water source and how much water they use for the
first time, the state says.
The Ohio Department of Natural
Resources now typically meets with drillers before drilling begins and
discusses planned water usage, said spokeswoman Heidi Hetzel-Evans.
But
plans are often sketchy and under current rules, drillers do not have
to tell the state what the water source or volume is, she said.
Drillers
also are getting well water from landowners with whom they have leases,
although the 12 counties in eastern Ohio where the drilling into the
Utica shale is under way are poor for ground water yields. Five gallons a
minute, enough for a household, is the typical yield, according to
state reports.
Lakes are more dependable
The drillers now want to tap into larger, dependable lakes and reservoirs in eastern Ohio.
Clendening
Reservoir holds an estimated 8.6 billion gallons. The watershed
district agreed to sell up to 11 million gallons or 0.12 percent of the
reservoir’s capacity to Gulfport Energy. Gulfport agreed to pay $9 per
1,000 gallons.
The village of Cadiz gets its drinking water from
the district via Tappan Lake in Harrison County. It pays 10 cents per
1,000 gallons. It has then been selling its water at a much higher price
to Chesapeake Energy. The village wants to buy more water from Tappan
to sell to drillers.
The watershed district has asked the U.S.
Geological Survey to determine how much “excess” water it might have
available to sell to drillers from three of its reservoirs: Clendening,
Leesville and Atwood.
A preliminary federal study indicated that
the district has available water in April but that level declines
through the summer as recreational needs must be met in the reservoirs.
Harper, meanwhile, has no intention of giving up.
“Water
is a valuable resource that we cannot afford to lose,” she said.
“What’s happening just isn’t right. It may be legal but we don’t think
it’s moral to exploit our natural resources. And I’m not going away.”
In Canada, ONE DROP is a charitable organization that develops
integrated, innovative projects with an international scope, in which
water plays a central role as a creative force in generating positive,
sustainable effects for local and foreign populations and in the fight
against poverty. More specifically, ONE DROP Canada, in cooperation with
partner Oxfam and others, develops access-to-water and sanitation
projects in countries where access to this vital resource is lacking. In
addition, ONE DROP is involved in raising awareness among individuals
and communities on water-related issues to convince them to mobilize for
universal access to water and urge them to adopt sound habits for
managing this precious resource for future generations. In closing, ONE
DROP Canada is also involved in fundraising—a crucial activity if it is
to realize its dream of water for all, today and tomorrow. To this end, the partners of ONE DROP have joined forces with the organization for pursuing this objective.
ONE DROP Canada serves as the organization’s international
headquarters. An international committee representing each of the
affiliates has been formed, in accordance with the clauses in the
affiliation agreement.
Learn about THE WATER CRISIS
There are two water cycles on our planet:
The first moves water from clouds to rain to oceans and back again.
The second affects communities without access to water as this drags
them deeper into poverty and poor health, which, in turn, makes it more
difficult for them to access water.
While the first rests in the hands of nature, the second rests in ours.
Water is an inherent right, yet almost a billion people
do not have access to safe drinking water and 2.5 billion live in areas
without sanitation. Worldwide solidarity is the best defence against
the monopolization of this invaluable resource.
Water is life, but we continue to pollute and
overexploit it, thus threatening the world’s diverse ecosystems and,
therefore, access to water today and in the future.
Water brings people together, not only geographically
but in the sense that the water crisis provides an opportunity for the
developed and developing worlds to work together like never before to
pool their resources, knowledge, experience and dreams for a common
purpose: to solve the problem and change the way society works.
People like you have come together to join ONE DROP, each one adding a
drop towards the solution. Our movement dreams of a day when the people
of the world unite to form a powerful river, sharing wealth of all kinds
to protect our water and make certain everyone has access to it. ONE
DROP believes global solidarity is the key to our dream of water for
all, today and tomorrow.
Access
Almost a billion people do not have access to safe drinking water, and 2.5 billion live without sanitation.
A lack of access to water exacerbates poverty. It is an
unforgiving cycle: poverty contributes to access problems, which in turn
leads to deeper impoverishment. In many cases, the poorest households
pay up to ten times more for their water than do more affluent homes.
Consider this fact: in Mozambique, the average person uses less than 10
litres of water per day, while an American uses approximately 575 litres
a day.
More unsettling are the challenges to the implementation of water
crisis solutions, such as a region’s governance, infrastructure and
economy. The dry truth is that, while certain areas of the world are in
need of access to safe drinking water, many local governments will
not—or cannot—allocate the appropriate resources to remedy the
situation. As a result, some communities must get their water from
sources shared with animals and contaminated with animal waste.
In many countries, ONE DROP backs local organizations and
partners who work together to bring money, technology and knowledge to
communities in need of access to safe water.
Health
Contaminated or poor-quality water is the second leading cause of
infant mortality in the world, killing close to 2 million each year.
Eighty
percent of developing-world diseases are related to lack of safe
drinking water. Those who fall ill cannot go to school or work and are
subsequently dragged deeper into poverty.
Beyond forcing
families to sacrifice food money to buy medicine, fighting disease is an
enormous drain on a country’s economy as resources that would otherwise
be spent on long-term social and development programs are diverted to
the more immediate needs of healthcare.
Study after study
confirms that serious health issues (such as cancer and birth defects)
and water pollution are inextricably linked. The water crisis and the
health problems that are tied to them are challenges shared among
developed and developing countries.
Women
Too often, women are not included in the decision-making process
surrounding water issues, even though the struggle to get water
typically falls on their shoulders.
The task of gathering water can take up to four hours a day.
Moving as much as 100 kg of water over many kilometres means risking
health and personal safety; in certain cases, there is no choice but to
go through areas that leave them vulnerable to attack by people or wild
animals.
Over 70% of those who collect water under such circumstances are
women and girls. As such, the daily chore prevents tens of millions of
girls from going to school, and those who do find the opportunity to
attend school often leave due to inadequate sanitation facilities.
Women are also more susceptible to waterborne diseases because it
is they who care for ill family members and wash clothing in rivers
filled with contaminants and bilharzias (blood flukes).
Time lost on collecting water could be better spent on
life-improving activities such as going to school or learning a trade.
Safe local water pumps can give them more of that precious time.
Furthermore, cutting down the duration of a woman’s daily water tasks to
one hour puts an extra US $100 into her pocket every year.
Over-consumption
While our thirst for water steadily rises, the water supply does
not. During the 20th century, the world’s population tripled, but its
consumption of water increased sevenfold.
Where we use water:
1. Agriculture (70% of world water use)
2. Industry (20%)
3. Domestic use (10%)
The planet is buckling under the stress of supplying us with
water for the seemingly infinite number of ways we have found to use it.
Today, almost 1.4 billion people live in river basin areas where
consumption of water exceeds the region’s ability to replenish itself.
Over-consumption leads to a variety of consequences:
Rivers run dry before they reach the sea
Underground tables dry up
The cost of finding water escalates
We live in an era of conflicting priorities when it comes to the
use of water. Too often, the planet’s diverse ecosystems—and all the
creatures in them, including humans—are not prioritized, protected or
preserved. Instead of allocating, distributing and preserving water so
everyone is provided for, we drop golf courses in the middle of the
desert and we use 2,400 litres of water to make a single hamburger
Pollution
Water pollution is a scourge of both developed and developing
countries. All nations need to take responsibility and help remedy the
situation by working together and sharing resources.
The sources of the pollution of our planet’s water are varied and
include aggressive agricultural practices, industry and municipal uses.
In the United States, 40% of waterways—from rivers to brooks—are
unsuitable for fishing, bathing or drinking. In developing countries,
90% of sewage is dumped—untreated—into bodies of water.
Water pollution threatens ecosystems and access to water for our
generation and those to come. All over the world, water is becoming less
suitable not only for human consumption but also for agricultural and
industrial use. It can even cause death, disease and other health
issues.
Making water potable is increasingly expensive; what’s more, the
costs are often not shared equally, thus exacerbating world poverty
levels.
Just one litre of lubricating oil can contaminate one million
litres of water. But a single drop of effort can change poor water
habits or provide access to safe drinking water.
A Solution
ONE DROP believes the solution to our planet’s water crisis is
solidarity. Each one of us—every country and every person—must recognize
and act on our responsibility towards water. But how are we to
accomplish this?
Our potential for creativity is infinite—unlike the water we must
work to preserve. Exploring audacious and inspiring solutions to
complex water problems requires that countries share the best of what
they have, whether that be knowledge, wealth, experience, materials,
technology, dreams or people.
Water is everywhere and essential
to all life. The prosperity—and perhaps even the very future—of the
human race is at stake; such a level of responsibility requires that we
work together. Solidarity is the solution waiting to happen.
Clouds and water vapor accounts for only a tiny fraction of all water
on Earth, but in spite of it, this moisture in the atmosphere is
crucially important to replenishing drinking water reservoirs, crop
yields, distribution of vegetation zones, and so on. This is the case
because in the atmosphere, clouds and water vapor, transports a vast
amount of water from oceans to land, where it falls out as
precipitation. Scientists generally agree that rising temperatures in
the coming decades will affect this cycling of water. And most climate
models successfully simulate a global intensification of rainfall.
However, physical models often disagree with observations and amongst
themselves on the amount of the intensification, and global distribution
of moisture that defines dry and wet regions.
In a paper published in Environmental Research Letters, my co-author and I investigated these model discrepancies (Liepert and Previdi, 2012) (see also here).
We developed a “quality control test” for climate models that is solely
based on physical principles. We retroactively sum up all possible
source, sink and storage terms of atmospheric moisture in models and
postulate that a perfectly balanced physical model is a model without
artificial leaks or floods in the system (note that small terms like
methane oxidation fluxes into the atmosphere, or changes in total cloud
water were not included). This approach of “self-consistency” is in
contrast to previous studies where scientists performed model “reality
checks” of comparisons with uncertainty prone precipitation
observations. Eighteen state-of-the-art climate models as described in
the United Nations 4th Assessment Report (IPCC-AR4) of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were included.
We found that most models predict an increase in moisture coming
towards land in the course of the 21st century due to larger warming of
land versus ocean surfaces with moderately increasing greenhouse gas
concentrations. Some models, however predict radically opposite results,
But these few models have large biases, which strongly affects the
multi-model mean. The multi-model mean is often used in climate science
and climate impact studies as “best predictor” since it smooths over
model inconsistencies. These biases appear to be associated with ‘leaks’
in the model whereby water does not appear to be conserved. Some model
leaks are even bigger than the anticipated global precipitation changes
in the 21st century. The multi-model average is therefore biased by
these few and has an average “leak” of the size of the discharge of the
Mississippi river!
With our self-consistency test we were able to identify the outliers
and narrow the prediction uncertainty. Only using the consistent models,
we expect that in this century, the atmosphere will increasingly
transport moisture towards land by the size of the river Nile, and with a
model uncertainty of up to 13 percent of increase.
It is difficult for models to keep track of the small amount of water
contained in the atmosphere (a thousandth of a percent of the total
water on Earth). On the other hand, it is crucially important to plug
leaks in physical climate models because water in the atmosphere plays
an important role in the energy balance of the Earth. A bit fewer
clouds, due to the leaks, can let extra solar energy reach the earth
surface and heat up the planet – lost water vapor would have the
opposite effect. This spurious energy flux in leaky models constitutes a
“ghost” forcing of climate. We calculate that the ghost forcing in the
IPCC models ranges from -1 to +6 watts per square meter, a forcing
comparable to the size of non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases – though
since it is roughly constant in time it doesn’t impact the transient
runs directly.
These results show that independent quality controls on climate model
simulations are crucial for assessing the quality of future climate
change predictions. Not all models are equally good and should be
utilized in climate impact studies.
Climate impact models
are used, along with crop yield, and hydrology models for instance, to
inform far reaching decision-making. Climate research institutions are
under pressure to build more accurate, more complex models that
incorporate not only the physical climate, but also ecosystem processes
and perhaps eventually, economic impacts. Testing and quality control
should of course accompany these model developments, and it is to the
credit of the modeling groups that they archive enough information in
the public archives of CMIP3 and now CMIP5 that we can do these tests
independently, assess the remaining problems and hopefully improve the
predictions.
Aqua Republica is a new online strategic game that taps into social
networks and the phenomenon of serious games. It helps raise awareness
and educate stakeholders of the importance and challenges of managing
limited natural resources in the face of multiple and often competing
demands in the drive towards sustainable development.
Who is it for?
Entry level water managers and policy makers, as well as
universities, schools and anyone who is interested in, or should be
interested in, sustainable development.
What can be gained from it?
Build capacity and increase knowledge on water resources management
Learn to balance developmental needs with water resources and the environment
Learn to manage conflicts in the use of water with other stakeholders
Learn to collaborate with other players to maximise transboundary developments
How can that be done?
By experiencing decisions-making in a realistic and interactive
learning environment, with real time simulation of hydrological
processes, developments and water resources management options.
Why is there a need?
There are critical connections between social and economic
developments and environmental sustainability, with water being an
essential building block. Unfortunately these linkages are not widely
recognized. The aim of this game is to raise awareness and to provide
education that utilizes on new technological trends.
What are these trends?
There has been a leap of technology developments in online social
networking, giving “viral phenomenon” a new definition. It describes how
thoughts, information and trends move into and through a human
population with the use of online social networks, analogous to the
spread of viruses. Aqua Republica is built with social networks in mind.
“Gamification” on the other hand, is the use of game design
techniques and game mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. It
is also one of the most important trends in communication technology.
What other benefits are there?
Aqua Republica provides a flexible and continuous online learning
platform for organisations interested in natural resource management
It also offers a fun way to encourage integrated water resources
management proficiency by gauging and tracking players’ progress
What is the game concept?
Aqua Republica is a serious game where a realistic simplification of
the real world is created for players to play and learn—by personal
experience, about the conflicts and trade-offs that exist in a river
basin.
What is it like to play it?
Alone or together with groups of players, you plan and develop a
river basin with multiple stakeholders. Your area initially contains a
river, a small urban area that includes some businesses and light
industry, a few farms and a small power station. Your aim is to create
prosperous living conditions for the population in a healthy and
sustainably managed environment.
As time moves on, drivers such as population growth, climate change
and actions of other players, force you to adapt to survive and thrive.
For example, you may need to decide to clear a forest area to open up
land to expand industry. However, developments are costly, take time to
implement, impact the environment and other users, as well as your
score.
How would you balance all the developmental needs while taking care of the environment and other players?
How can I learn from playing?
Serious games that are well designed yield “meaningful play”, a
condition very much like learning. Aqua Republica focuses on meaningful
play to engage players and to educate them about the complex
relationships between developmental actions in a river basin and the
natural environment as well as their consequences.
How realistic is it?
The game mechanics revolve around real science. Numerical
computational models (MIKE BASIN from DHI) are used in real-time to
generate a realistic game environment especially in terms of water
resources and hydrology. This allows players to also gain an insight
into working with nature while developing their communities.
