International World Water Day is held annually on 22 March, raising awareness of the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable resource management, highlighting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: sanitation and water. This year, the theme is Water and Climate Change and how these two elements are inextricably linked.
IWA Publishing is proud to support this important day and the sharing of research and experience from across the globe. In celebration, we are excited to offer free access to the Journal of Water & Climate Change for a fortnight (15th-29th March).
This means that all papers from the journal can be read and downloaded completely free of charge during this period!
Chris Perera, Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Water & Climate Change explains below why the journal is essential reading for those interested in the intrinsic link between water and climate change:
"Water and climate change are intrinsically linked. Currently there is a strong scientific consensus that the Earth is warming and that this warming is mainly due to human activities. Climate change will affect human societies and the natural environment resulting in economic, social and environmental consequences. With climate change, the water cycle is expected to undergo significant change and disturbs the natural balance that may have seen under the stable climate. The potential direct consequences of climate change on water include wet areas becoming wetter and dry areas drier, longer periods of drought in some regions, an increase in the number, duration and intensity of tropical storms, drop in groundwater tables, decline in water quality in rivers, lakes and groundwater aquifers, salinity intrusion in groundwater supplies, and rise in sea level. There are also indirect consequences such as the effect of human health and the risks associated with development of cities and towns. Better management of water resources will ensure that quality water is available for people, industry, agriculture, livestock, and biodiversity despite climate change. The Journal of Water & Climate Change addresses these issues and challenges publishing innovative research papers which are useful for both researchers and practitioners."
Chris has also chosen 5 exceptional papers that were recently published in the journal - find out why they were chosen below!
P. Sonali and Nagesh Kumar
https://doi.org/10.2166/wcc.2020.091
Detection and attribution of climate change involves assessing the causes of observed changes in the climate system through climate models and observations using various methods and techniques. Detection and attribution studies are important as they help (1) determine whether human influence on climate variables can be distinguished from natural variability, (2) evaluate whether the model simulations are consistent with observed trends or other changes in the climate system, and (3) the scientific community and policymakers to deal with climate change adaptation and mitigation challenges. This paper reviewed various processes and advances in climate change detection and attribution analyses at global/regional scales during the past few decades.
Zhenyu Zhang, Junjie Gu, Guoshun Zhang, Wenjing Ma, Lei Zhao, Ping Ning and Jian Shen
https://doi.org/10.2166/wcc.2019.120
In China, the Sponge City Initiative is gaining traction, and also generally refers to an approach that is designed to mitigate the impacts of urbanization on waterways, particularly flooding, poor water quality and water scarcity, while concurrently adapting to projected climate change impacts. Previous studies on low impact development (LID) practices in Sponge City planning and implementation were mostly site-scale or neighborhood-scale, but this study focused on a large-scale urban watershed. This study also focused on high-plateau mountainous cities compared to previous studies on Sponge City planning mostly concentrating on plain cities.
A review of the effects of climate change on riverine flooding in subtropical and tropical regions
Rohan Eccles, Hong Zhang and David Hamilton
https://doi.org/10.2166/wcc.2019.175
Tropical and subtropical regions can be particularly severely affected by flooding. Climate change is expected to lead to more intense precipitation in many regions of the world, increasing the frequency and magnitude of flood events. This paper presents a review of studies assessing the impacts of climate change on riverine flooding in the world’s tropical and subtropical regions through a systematic quantitative approach. Data accessibility and mitigation of model uncertainty were recognised as the principal issues faced by researchers investigating the impacts of climate change on tropical and subtropical rivers.
Hashim Isam Jameel Al-Safi, Hamideh Kazemi and P. Ranjan Sarukkalige
https://doi.org/10.2166/wcc.2019.180
The application of two distinctively different hydrologic models, one conceptual and the other distributed, was compared to simulate the future runoff across three unregulated catchments in Australia, which had experienced significant runoff reduction during the last decades due to climate change and human activities. The Budyko-elasticity method was employed to assign the influences of human activities and climate change on runoff variations. The downscaled future climate signals from a multi-model ensemble of eight GCMs of the CMIP5 under the RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios were used to simulate future daily runoff. Results show that the conceptual model performed better than the distributed model in capturing the observed streamflow across all three catchments. Both models predicted a decline in wet and dry season's streamflow across all three catchments.
Analysis of spatial variability and temporal trends of rainfall in Amhara region, Ethiopa
Melkamu Meseret Alemu and Getnet Taye Bawoke
https://doi.org/10.2166/wcc.2019.084
Understanding rainfall distribution in space and time is crucial for sustainable water resource management and agricultural productivity. This study investigated the spatial distribution and temporal trends of rainfall in Amhara region in Ethiopia using past time series rainfall data and several statistical methods. Results showed that the region has been experiencing variable rainfall events that cause droughts and floods over different years. Trend analysis results showed an overall increase in the annual and seasonal rainfall (except winter) during the study period. These results can be used as input for decision makers to take appropriate adaptive measures in various agricultural and water resources sectors.
Explore all World Water Day resources from IWA Publishing here.
