Catastrophic climate crisis - Investigation: Environmental shifting affects underground liquid purity
Owing to the increase in temperatures, a prediction claims that by the year 2100, over a hundred million people could reside in regions where the quality of groundwater is impaired and their well-being is under threat. Susanne Benz from the Institute for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) sums up, "This implies that the water there is not safe to drink without being boiled first." "In line with the climate scenario, up to several hundred million people are likely to be affected."
Harmful health effects: Arsen and mangan
The temperature of the subterranean water is a crucial factor that affects the quantity of harmful substances like arsen or mangan in it. As Benz elaborates, "These heightened amounts can be detrimental to human health, especially if the groundwater is utilized as a source of drinking water." Moreover, bacteria like Legionella could proliferate.
Concerning the consequences on biodiversity, Benz adds that increased water temperatures seem to affect aquatic species, such as salmon, which use subterranean water as a source to spawn. "If these areas are too warm, it poses a risk to their reproduction."
Henceforth, little was understood about the effects of Earth's surface warming due to climate change on groundwater. The group led by Benz has now projected variations in groundwater temperature globally up to the year 2100. These findings were recently published in the prestigious scientific journal "Nature Geoscience."
Call for safeguarding groundwater resources
The scientists assessed different scenarios for greenhouse gas emission. In a medium scenario, the groundwater temperature rises by 2.1 degrees, while in an extreme scenario, it increases by 3.5 degrees. As a consequence, 77 to 188 million people or 59 to 588 million people could live in areas where the subterranean water temperature exceeds the highest limit set by a nation for drinking water.
"The noticeable variations stem from the spatial variability of climate change and population development," KIT states. "The lowest warming rates are expected in mountainous regions, such as the Andes or the Rocky Mountains, which possess a deep subterranean water table."
"Today, approximately 30 million people live in regions where the groundwater temperature is above the strictest drinking water guidelines. Our results demonstrate the importance of implementing safeguards to preserve groundwater resources and devising sustainable solutions to counter the detrimental impacts of climate change on subterranean water," says Susanne Benz.
