From E3Wise - Drinking water is earth’s most precious and threatened natural resource. Essential to all life on the planet understanding how water is being effected by climate change should be paramount in our understanding and focus regarding climate changes threat to our world. Read more at the link below.
Chelsea Harvey
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Climate change is reshaping the planet in a big way.
Rising temperatures, melting ice, and surging seas are just a few of the obvious effects that we’re already observing. And, according to recent climate reports, these events could bring on a whole host of other consequences, including bigger storms, increases in infectious disease, shifts in plant and animal life, famines, droughts, and even increased poverty and civil unrest.
In fact, climate change is threatening one of our planet’s most precious and necessary resources: our water.
We don’t mean the oceans, although climate-caused water warming and ocean acidification are going to be big problems too. We’re talking about our freshwater resources — the water we depend on for drinking, bathing, and nourishing our crops, which can’t grow in salt water.
Higher temperatures can increase the chance of drought, making water scarce. Hotter weather also means people, animals, and even plants need to take in bigger volumes of water to avoid dehydration, putting a strain on the water supplies that already exist. On top of that, sea-level rise in coastal areas can allow salty ocean water to contaminate freshwater aquifers, which many coastal communities rely on for their drinking water.
How serious the water problem gets — along with all the other climate-related effects — depends on whether humans can buckle down and start cutting the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we use currently pour into the atmosphere.
In some places around the world, we’re already seeing the first examples of how climate change could leave us all thirsty. Here are just a few:
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