Scripps & NOAA Studies Project Wrenching Changes For Water Supplies

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The principles involved are "exceedingly simple and uncontroversial," he says. "When it's warmer, you may have the same amount of precipitation, but more will be in the form of rain than snow. That's 'duh.' And if you have any snowpack in a warmer world, it's going to melt earlier." This can translate into less water in summer and fall. The team looked at the effect of a shrinking snowpack on Europe's Rhine River and the Canadian prairie, as well as the Western US. They found a range of effects, from reduced freight shipments along the Rhine to increased farm vulnerability to drought. As for glaciers, "they are fossil water," Dr. Barnett says. "They may melt right up to the end, and you don't think you have a problem. Then, hey, they're gone."

One of the areas the team sees as most crucial is the region whose thirst is slaked by glaciers in the Himalayas and Hindu Kush mountains. Collectively, these mountain ranges hold the third largest mass of ice after Antarctica and Greenland. The rivers they feed provide much of the water for 50 to 60 percent of the world's population. Yet China's latest survey of the mountains show that over the past 25 years, the glaciers are in wholesale retreat.

"These results are really robust," says Christopher Milly, a researcher with the US Geological Survey working at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Dr. Milly and two colleagues produced the second study, which compares the results of 12 climate models used to project future annual stream flows worldwide.

By 2050, the models projected a 10 to 40 percent increase in annual stream flows in eastern equatorial Africa, South America's La Plata basin, and the near-polar regions of North America and Eurasia. Southern Africa, southern Europe, the Middle East, and western North America saw 10 percent to 30 percent declines.

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http://csmonitor.com/2005/1117/p04s01-usgn.html

http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/article_detail.cfm?article_num=703

The alternate GD thread is here. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5383909 (Sometimes they don't know we're here at GD.)

This is just another serious manifestation of the magnitude of the problem. No one really seems to grasp what is happening, even though it is happening right in front of us.

about the privatization of water -the money to be made over it - what a mess that has been - how a lot of people who had been able to get water for free - now have to pay for it - even though they haven't any money to buy it with - lose their homes over it, etc. etc. etc.

I am seriously factoring in climate as a big factor influencing where I choose to settle down in a few years.