Royal Mail Climate Change Challenge Pack: UNIT 1 STATION 4

Station Information Sheets

Station 4: Effects on water supply
The total population of the world is growing fast
(6.5 billion in September 2006) and our water use
is growing even faster (see fig 1).

FIG 1 World population graph 1800–2100

A third of the world’s population lives in water-

stressed countries now. By 2025, this is expected to
rise to two-thirds.
Royal Mail Climate Change Challenge Pack:
The United Nations recommends that people need
a minimum of 50 litres of water a day for drinking,
washing, cooking and sanitation. In 1990, over a
billion people did not have even that. There is more
than enough water available, in total, for everyone’s
basic needs, but water isn’t evenly distributed and
it isn’t always reliable.
Climate change will have a significant impact on
water supply:
• Some areas will probably benefit from increased
rainfall, others are likely to lose out on much
needed water.
• The big losers will be the continental interiors
like the African Sahel region. Here higher
temperatures and irregular, decreasing rainfall
in countries like Sudan and Chad have created
droughts that have persisted over decades, and
are set to get worse according to many scientists.
• Some areas that stand to “gain” in terms of
water supply may not see it as a blessing and
this will increasingly arrive in the form of intense
storms that cause massive run-off. Little of the
water delivered by such storms can be easily
stored for future use.
Key findings of researchers at the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography at the University
of California, San Diego, and the University of
Washington. Nature November 16 2005.
• Global warming makes glaciers smaller and
reduces annual snowpack; communities relying
on these sources for fresh water are likely to
face serious shortages.
• In a warming climate, the scientists predicted
that more water will fall as rain than currently
falls as snow. Existing reservoirs will fill to
capacity earlier than they now do in the spring.
As a result water will be lost to the sea.
UNIT 1 STATION 4
• What snowmelt there is will also rush down
mountain streams earlier than it currently does,
exceeding the capacity of reservoirs, according
to their predictions.
• Communities that currently rely on a long, slow
snowmelt for summer’s water supply, like those
in the North American West, will face shortages.
“When you change the seasonality of how rivers flow
you are essentially putting the water runoff all into
spring rather than being able to draw it out through
summer,” said Tim Barnett of Scripps. “Mother Nature
is not going to act like a reservoir as it has in the past
and when the water comes out all at once there isn’t
enough capacity to contain it.”
• Predictions for the Rhine River Basin in Europe
suggest that a decline in water availability will
affect industry, agriculture and households.
• Himalayan and Andean regions dependent on
water supplies provided by mountainous glacial
mass face the most serious consequences because
melting caused by global warming cannot be
reversed and the water source will not be
replenished.
Humans aren’t the only ones who need water.
Every species that shares the planet with us – as
well as all the ecosystems on which we, and they,
rely – must have water to survive. Too little water
(from irregular rainfall to prolonged drought) can
put ecosystems under stress to the point that insect,
fish, bird and animal species may be lost for ever.
Humans notice this most when crops fail, but far
more subtle and often irreversible changes are
happening unnoticed.
We have to rethink how much water we really need
if we are to learn how to share the finite resources
we have.