|
|
A huge pool of fresh water in the Arctic Ocean is expanding and could lower the temperature of Europe by causing an ocean current to slow down, British scientists said on Sunday.
 The Beaufort Gyre ("rotating pattern") slowly swirls the surface waters of the Arctic basin, turning the Polar Ice Cap along with it. It makes one complete rotation about every 4 years Using satellites to measure sea surface height from 1995 to 2010, scientists from University College London and Britain’s National Oceanography Centre found that the western Arctic’s sea surface has risen by about 150mm since 2002.
The volume of fresh water has increased by at least 8 000km³, or about 10% of all the fresh water in the Arctic Ocean. The fresh water comes from melting ice and river run-off.
The rise could be due to strong Arctic winds increasing an ocean current called the Beaufort Gyre, making the sea surface bulge upwards.
The Beaufort Gyre is one of the least understood bodies of water on the planet. It is a slowly swirling body of ice and water north of Alaska, about 10 times bigger than Lake Michigan in the United States.
Some scientists believe the natural rhythms of the gyre could be affected by global warming which could have serious implications for the ocean’s circulation and rising sea levels.
Climate models have suggested that wind blowing on the surface of the sea has formed a raised dome in the middle of the Beaufort Gyre, but there have been few in-depth studies to confirm this. Continue reading Beaufort Gyre could cool Europe
Article by: Sue Blaine
Source: Business Day Blogs
Here’s a suburban scene that makes my blood boil: someone using a garden hose to “sweep” a driveway. In fact, it’s not only in suburbia that you see this — I saw an employee of a top Rosebank hotel doing the same this morning.
 We still use potable water to “sweep” driveways Perhaps the reality is this: water is just not expensive enough in South Africa.
We have had endless government campaigns about saving electricity, but I have yet to see much, if anything, on saving water. We ignore water at our peril.
Poor-quality water “was of limited use and added to society’s economic burden through treatment costs and secondary impacts” on the economy, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research said in its a 2011 report on water in South Africa.
The country’s National Water Resource Strategy calls for “appropriate and timely corrective measures” to mitigate the effects of industrialisation and urbanisation on its water resources.
The CSIR report notes that in 2005, 95% of South Africa’s freshwater resources had already been allocated. The country’s average annual rainfall, at 450mm, is less than half the global average (850mm) and 10 of the water management areas in South Africa could not fulfil demand in 2000, according to the report. Continue reading We ignore water at our peril
By: Jeremy Westgarth-Taylor (Founder of Water Rhapsody Conservation Systems and winner of a WWF Green Trust Award)
Water is in the news again, but never has the situation been as dire as today. Quite simply – Cape Town is out of water. Any new augmentation schemes are not sustainable.
The following are proposed non-sustainable schemes:
- Damming the Lourens River at Somerset West: This will add less than one percent capacity to our beleaguered situation. There are no more rivers that can possibly be dammed to provide any more water for Cape Town.
- Extracting water from the berg by pumping to the Voëlvlei Dam: The well-respected head of the Freshwater Research Unit at UCT, Prof Jenny Day, commented that this was a “no-no”. Already the salinity of the Lower Berg River is rising to unacceptable standards, and any further extraction will make this worse. The situation of the Lower Breede River is equally parlous.
- Desalination of sea water: this is not sustainable as it is too costly on any scale let alone on a large scale. Costly because each kilolitre of water desalinated from sea water will cost more energy than we have got or we likely will get. Desalination costs eight kilowatt hours per kilolitre of desalinated water. Further problems of desalination are that a super saline concentrate is returned back to sea, which turns valleys in the sea into a place where neither plants nor animals can survive.
- Pumping from the TMG (Table Mountain Aquifer): Already we have seen deep boreholes dry up and collapse in this aquifer and any extraction from this aquifer will have a negative impact on the river systems as this is most likely where the recharge of the aquifer will come from. These are the same rivers that are now dammed to extinction throughout the Western Cape.
- Recycling of sewerage effluent: while this is to be supported, it must be understood that this will not be acceptable to some of our religious groups. It should also be noted that our sewerage systems are in an unsafe condition, and we need some 6.6 billion Rand to upgrade and build new sewerage treatment works. Here too energy plays a huge role, as 90% of the running cost of our sewerage treatment works is the energy cost of pumping water around the various treatment sewerage works. At last check there was only 300 million on any long term budget for upgrading sewerage works. Continue reading Future water supplies lie in demand management
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 06 Dec 2011
Efforts to establish water as an agenda item in its own right in climate change negotiations are gaining momentum in Durban, South Africa. Water experts say doing this will lead to a greater focus on developing policy, and attract more resources into the water sector through adaptation programmes.
 As rainfall patterns change, Africa is facing major crises “For every one of us, the first thing you use when you wake up in the morning is water, and when we are going to bed, it is water. Yet, it’s taken for granted,” says Chris Moseki, research manager at the Water Research Commission (WRC) in South Africa. WRC is a member of the Global Water Partnership (GWP) – a global alliance of organisations working on water issues.
Access to water is an urgent issue here in the Southern Africa region, where nearly 100 million people lack adequate access to water. Modelling by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa shows the region will become hotter and drier over the next 50 to 100 years, putting farms, industry, domestic water supply and natural ecosystems at risk.
International water experts and policy makers are concerned that planning for changes to water availability is not getting the prominence it deserves. Bai-Mass Taal, the Executive Secretary of the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW), says they are working to raise the profile of water within the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
“We are saying to the parties, look: we appreciate what you are doing in other sectors, but without addressing water directly, all of that will be in vain,” says Taal. Continue reading Raising the profile of water
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 02 Dec 2011
The City of Tshwane has made history by being the first municipality in South Africa to use hydropower. This huge project was launched on 29 November 2011. This has realised the objectives of the study that was done by the University of Pretoria through funding from the Water Research Commission, which explored the use of water to generate power that could assist in supplementing the existing supply within a municipality. With this new source of energy, the country could start looking into providing such a service to other areas while reducing the problematic carbon emissions from coal that poses a threat to the environment.
 Hydropower is still an untapped resource of energy within the African continent The ‘Pressure Hydropower System’ has been installed and integrated at the new site, Pierre van Ryneveld reservoir located in the south-eastern part of the City of Tshwane. When operational, the system will generate about 16 Kilowatts of electricity per hour.
The acting Executive Mayor, Councillor Terence Mashego congratulated the team of experts and applauded the excellent work done by the University of Pretoria and its students and the Water Research Commission for funding such an initiative.
“The fact that somebody was employed to take part in the project by working on it or supplying stock for it, the project assisted in putting food on the table for those families’. I also appreciate that the project involved students who should be promoted based on their contribution towards this big initiative’’ says councillor Mashego. Continue reading Tshwane taps into hydropower
|
Water Rhapsody
is a
WWF Green Trust
award winner.
Save up to 90% of your municipal water bill.
|
