Water availability

[ArcticMelt2]

The world's population is growing rapidly, and by 2100 will exceed 10 billion.

As a result, the shortage of drinking water is increasing.

The clearest example of this was the situation in the Dead Sea region.

https://isramar.ocean.org.il/isramar2009/DeadSea/DS_Level_Stability_1991-2019.gif

http://icl-group-sustainability.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/graph-new.png

[crandles]

Why is title 'water hunger' rather than thirst/drinking water availability?

[ArcticMelt2]

Why is title 'water hunger' rather than thirst/drinking water availability?

Renamed the topic.

After the Dead Sea, the situation with the Aral Sea became a major water accident.

Now the water level in 2 out of 3 of its residues continues to decline steadily.





https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/11/2/113/htm

[ArcticMelt2]

Another graph:

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/11/2/113/htm

Figure 3. Fluctuations of the Aral Sea level (after [30]–before 1993 and after [33,34,35]–in 1993–2018). 1–Aral Sea (1960–1986); 2–North Aral Sea (1986–2018); 3–South Aral Sea (1986–2006); 4–East Aral Sea (2007–2018); 5–West Aral Sea (2007–2018).

[El Cid]

Wow! People living in a desert have little water after they used it for irrigation. How amazing

[ArcticMelt2]

Wow! People living in a desert have little water after they used it for irrigation. How amazing

This suggests that people are becoming the main consumer of water on the planet. The level of the largest lakes objectively shows that human civilization is approaching the limit of available fresh water. The population of the planet is growing, more and more food products are needed, as well as biofuels. The situation is getting worse. Water wars may soon begin.

Another striking example is the water level in the largest lake on the planet - the Caspian Sea.



The level of the Caspian Sea fell throughout the 20th century, until the 1980s. In order to slow down the fall, the hottest gulf with high evaporation was blocked in the USSR. The consequences were unpredictable: sea level began to rise rapidly. In this regard, the dam was blown up in 1991. After that, the sea level began to fall again with even greater speed. Recent satellite measurements show that sea level has reached a 1980 low. Further it will be even worse.

[ArcticMelt2]

The level of the largest lake in Iran - Urmia lake. A drop of 8 meters in 30 years. The population of Iran has grown over this period from 60 to 80 million.

[ArcticMelt2]

Lake Salton Sea in Southern California. A drop of 4 meters over the past 30 years.

[ArcticMelt2]

Now let's move from satellite altimetry to satellite gravitymetry.

https://www.ft.com/content/c2f6ab6a-5915-11e8-b8b2-d6ceb45fa9d0



This suggests that artificial irrigation leads to a huge increase in evaporation and that the interior of the continents extremely quickly lose water. Groundwater has been accumulating for thousands of years, and it is a non-renewable resource. Their quick loss exacerbates the situation.

These processes are especially evident in the Middle East, in the Caspian region, in the southern part of the USA, in the northern part of India and China.

[ArcticMelt2]

Human civilization now take so much water for their needs that as a result, on average, all continents outside the glaciers lose liquid water.

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-scientists-reveal-substantial-loss-global.html

This illustration shows terrestrial water storage changes in global endorheic basins from GRACE satellite observations, April 2002 to March 2016. In the top image, terrestrial water storage trends -- in millimeters of equivalent water thickness per year -- for each endorheic unit are highlighted, followed by animated monthly terrestrial water storage anomalies, also in millimeters. The bottom image shows monthly net terrestrial water storage anomalies in gigatonnes, in global endorheic and exorheic systems -- excluding Greenland, Antarctica and the oceans -- and linkage to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, right axis. Terrestrial water storage anomalies are relative to the time-mean baseline in each unit or system, with removal of seasonality. For comparison, 360 gigatonnes of terrestrial water storage equals 1 millimeter of sea level equivalent. Courtesy of Jida Wang. Credit: Kansas State University

[ArcticMelt2]

Over the past 15 years alone, the continents have lost about a trillion tons of liquid water! And then the situation will only get worse.

[ArcticMelt2]

To solve the problem of water hunger, huge costs will be required for desalination and river turning. Similar programs exist on the Arabian Peninsula and in China. Actually change the river.

[ArcticMelt2]

More details.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Transfer_Project

The South–North Water Transfer Project, also translated as the South-to-North Water Diversion Project[1] (Chinese: 南水北调工程; pinyin: Nánshuǐ Běidiào Gōngchéng; literal meaning: Project of diverting the south water to the north) is a multi-decade infrastructure mega-project in the People's Republic of China. Ultimately it aims to channel 44.8 billion cubic meters of fresh water annually[2] from the Yangtze River in southern China to the more arid and industrialized north through three canal systems:[3]
- The Eastern Route through the course of the Grand Canal;
- The Central Route flowing from the upper reaches of the Han River (a tributary of Yangtze River) to Beijing and Tianjin;
- The Western Route which goes from three tributaries of Yangtze River near the Bayankala Mountain to provinces like Qinghai, Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and Ningxia.[4]

Mao Zedong discussed the idea for a mass engineering project as an answer to China's water problems as early as 1952. He reportedly said, "there's plenty of water in the south, not much water in the north. If at all possible; borrowing some water would be good."[5][6] The complete project was expected to cost $62 billion – more than twice as much as the Three Gorges Dam.[7] By 2014, more than $79 billion had been spent, making it one of the most expensive engineering projects in history.[8]

Project controversy
The project required resettling at least 330,000 people in central China.[19] Critics have warned the water diversion will cause environmental damage and some villagers said officials had forced them to sign agreements to relocate.[19]

In the summer of 2013, complaints arrived from the fish farmers on the Dongping Lake, on the project's Eastern Route, in Shandong, reporting that the polluted Yangtze River water entering the lake was killing their fish.[20]

Government officials and defenders of the project claim the Yangtze River has a plentiful supply of water, with 96% of the water currently flowing into the Pacific Ocean. They argue that transferring one portion to the poorly irrigated areas of the north could solve the north's water scarcity issue.[16]

[Tom_Mazanec]

And of course all that water taken from inland lakes ultimately ends up increasing sea level slightly.

[ArcticMelt2]

And of course all that water taken from inland lakes ultimately ends up increasing sea level slightly.

You can try to fill the deep basins with the ocean to stop the growth of the ocean. There is a project to fill the Dead Sea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sea%E2%80%93Dead_Sea_Water_Conveyance

The decline of the Dead Sea level is creating major environmental problems, including sink holes and receding sea shores. Other routes for a conduit for the same objectives as the Red - Dead Conduit, the Mediterranean–Dead Sea Canal, were proposed in Israel in the 1980s, but were discarded. The project costs $10 billion in all of its phases, with the first phase, which is slated to begin construction in 2021, will cost $1.1 billion. The Jordanian government is currently in the process of shortlisting consortiums and waiting for the final feasibility study, for which international funding would follow.

Another solution could be the construction of a large number of hydropower plants. This will stop rising ocean levels and increase the share of renewable energy. But such a path will lead to flooding of large territories. Although it is not as dangerous as the flooding of coastal areas with ports and millionaire cities.

It is believed that by 2007, through the construction of artificial dams, we were able to restrain the rise in ocean level by 3 centimeters.


ftp://ftp.soest.hawaii.edu/coastal/Climate%20Articles/Chao_2008%20Water%20impoundment.pdf

[ArcticMelt2]

The graph above shows that in some years, due to the construction of hydroelectric power plants and filling reservoirs, mankind has reduced the ocean level by 1 mm per year. Now the ocean level is growing at a speed of 4-5 mm per year. So we have to build many times more hydropower plants.

While we are losing. This is also evidenced by the comparison of the area of new land and new lakes over the past 30 years.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/09/water-land-sea-levels-shift-map/

Using satellite images from Landsat’s four decades of continuous global coverage and Google Earth Engine, scientists mapped which parts of Earth’s surface have been covered in water, and which are now dry land. The results, shown in the map above, revealed that between 1985 and 2015 around 173,000 square kilometers (67,000 square miles) of water were transformed into land and 115,000 square kilometers (44,000 square miles) of water shifted to dry land. That’s a net gain of land area the size of Lake Michigan.

The changes are spread across the globe and are both natural and man-made. Many of them are well known, like the shrinking of the Aral Sea. But some changes had never been mapped before, such as the damming of the Rimjin River in North Korea just north of the border with South Korea. The areas with the most land converted to water were the Amazon River Basin and the Tibetan Plateau, which you can see in blue in the image above. Surprisingly, coastal areas across the globe had a net gain of more than 13,000 square kilometers (5,000 square miles) of land, largely due to human construction that has outpaced natural erosion.

Unfortunately, continents lose water too quickly.

[Tom_Mazanec]

You can try to fill the deep basins with the ocean to stop the growth of the ocean. There is a project to fill the Dead Sea.

I also heard one to fill a depression in North Africa. I forget the name, but I think it started with 'Q'.

[IceConcerned]

Jules Verne already thought about it : "La mer intérieure"

[kassy]

Reservoirs wont help long term in areas with high evaporation, nor will they have a function if their source dries out (disappearing glaciers).

There are tons of gains to be had with better land management.
And better water management in general (waste less, recycle more).

Large scale desalination is problematic itself because you take out water and what you put back has changed from sea water to basically toxic brine.

For sustainable desalination we might want to look at smarter ways to do it.

[oren]

You can try to fill the deep basins with the ocean to stop the growth of the ocean. There is a project to fill the Dead Sea.

I also heard one to fill a depression in North Africa. I forget the name, but I think it started with 'Q'.

That would be the Qattara depression.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project

[oren]

The world's population is growing rapidly, and by 2100 will exceed 10 billion.

As a result, the shortage of drinking water is increasing.

World population is extrapolated/forecasted to reach 10 billion by 2050 unfortunately. So the issues considered in this thread will be larger and sooner.
By 2100 I can't see how the global population can still be maintained at 10 billion. Too long an overshoot above carrying capacity does not end well.

[Tom_Mazanec]

You can try to fill the deep basins with the ocean to stop the growth of the ocean. There is a project to fill the Dead Sea.

I also heard one to fill a depression in North Africa. I forget the name, but I think it started with 'Q'.

That would be the Qattara depression.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project

Thanks oren. I never would have remembered that one... the second letter isn’t even ‘u’.

[ArcticMelt2]

The land will lose more and more water due to its progressive heating in comparison with the oceans.

https://twitter.com/zlabe

Temperatures over land have warmed approximately 2x as fast as ocean surface temperatures. The 2019 mean global temperature was about 1.2°C (2.2°F) above pre-industrial levels (1880-1920).

[wili]

The assumptions behind the statements at the opening of this thread seem a bit faulty.

It is not raw population numbers that determine water depletion, but population times water use per capita. Water is used for many (and many stupid) things by the wealthy and the relatively wealthy of the world, leaving much less for the rest to use for mere survival.

But yes, water availability was just identified as one of the five top crises threatening to bring about societal collapse:

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/02/multiple-eco-crises-could-trigger-systemic-collapse-scientists/

Overlapping environmental crises could tip the planet into “global systemic collapse,” more than 200 top scientists warned Wednesday.

Climate change, extreme weather events from hurricanes to heatwaves, the decline of life-sustaining ecosystems, food security and dwindling stores of fresh water — each poses a monumental challenge to humanity in the 21st century.

[Gumbercules]

Lake Salton Sea in Southern California. A drop of 4 meters over the past 30 years.

The Salton Sea, in its modern form, is man-made. It doesn't belong there and should not be considered relevant.

[Tom_Mazanec]

HotSpots H2O: Rapidly Disappearing Tuni Glacier Raises Concerns for Bolivian Water Scarcity
https://www.circleofblue.org/2021/wef/hotspots-h2o-rapidly-disappearing-tuni-glacier-raises-concerns-for-bolivian-water-scarcity/

The Tuni glacier, a formerly vast piece of ice that rises over the Bolivian capital of La Paz as a critical water source, is disappearing faster than predicted, reported Reuters earlier this month. The resulting melt will lead to further water shortages in the capital region, where water is already scarce.
While scientists initially anticipated that the glacier would last until 2025, the ice field is now less than a square kilometer and is expected to vanish quickly. Tuni has been shrinking since the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling that began in the 14th century, but more recent climate change events, drought, and torrential rainfall in Bolivia have accelerated the process.