With concerns about climate ‘extremes’ growing, water is often the focus, either too much or too little. That is no coincidence: climate and the hydrological cycle are tightly connected, and water is essential to ecosystems and societies. But it is not just the quantity of water that matters. So does its quality.
Decreased water quality is a global and growing problem, It is limiting resources for drinking, domestic use, food production and recreation, as well as harming ecosystems. The effects vary from algal blooms and hypoxic ‘dead zones’, to bacterial, viral and chemical contamination, to pollution by personal-care products and pharmaceuticals. Some cases of extreme water quality decrease lead to major human and ecosystem impacts. The costs can be huge. More than US$4 billion is lost each year in the United States alone as a result of harmful algal blooms.
Because the most severe water-quality impacts are caused by weather, climate plays a big part. Runoff of nutrients from farmland increases tremendously after heavy rains, warm temperatures accelerate the growth of bacteria and phytoplankton. As climate change alters weather patterns and variability around the world, conditions contributing to severe water-quality decrease are likely to become more frequent.
Yet there has been a lack of studies about how climate change will affect the happening of the extreme events that are related to water quality instead of quantity. It is obvious that modern day scientists do not know how to relate water-quality extremes, their causes, their impact or their occurrence to changes in climate. The scientific community has made significant progress in understanding the role of climate and climate change in the occurrence and intensity of droughts, storms and other extreme events relating to water quantity. It is time for a similar examination of extremes in water quality.
WATER AND MORE WATER AND MORE WATER 
“Yet there has been a lack of studies about how climate change will affect the happening of the extreme events that are related to water quality instead of quantity. It is obvious that modern day scientists do not know how to relate water-quality extremes, their causes, their impact or their occurrence to changes in climate.”
Isn’t it strange that the we humans find it so hard to acknowledge that we as humans are responsible for a huge part of climate change? Why is there a lack of studies about how climate change infuences water pollution? I think we should invest more in our planet’s future by learning more about it!
LikeLike
I think a lot of people are ignoring the fact that we have something to do with the climate change. We, as people, like to think everything we do is perfect and everything can be fixed. And it can be fixed, IF we do something. But that cost so much effort that we postpone the problem, to deal with them later.
So I think the reason that there are so little articles about climate change about quality or quantity, because we have to admit that it’s our fault the climate is getting destroyed
LikeLike