How will climate change impact groundwater resources?

Groundwater resources are the main source of drinking water throughout the world. The drivers to their future evolution are linked to most of the remaining uncertainties of climate modelling (future rainfall and intensity of it). Describing precisely the reservoirs geometry and the boundary conditions of aquifers is complex and limit our capacity to estimate the renewable water volume available.

How is interdecadal-to-centennial natural variability taken into account in the IPCC GCMs projections?

This low-frequency natural variability might hide or intensify the climate system response to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In fact, for the next 30 years it seems that interdecadal natural variability would play a major role in the expected changes of rainfall and temperature in many regions, for instance, in South America.

How will different landscapes on Earth react on future climate change?

It is important to find out about future climate change (especially by reconstructing the past), but I think it is even more important for the adaption to future changes if we know how the landscapes we are living in will react on it and how sensitive what kind of landscape is to climate change. Landscape means the natural or semi-natural area where people are living and which can be affected by direct and indirect changes in the hydrological and geomorphological system, e.g. (soil)erosion, vegetation loss or gain, desertification and so on, which all needs to be looked at in a holistic way, subordinated over and including different parts of earth system sciences considering various scales in time and space. The best way to find out about the future then is to look into the past and interpret and combine it with modeling of present landscape processes in different climate regimes. Then we might get a glance on how we have to or can adapt to different future perspectives and climate change however it will be, preserving human’s livelihoods.

How much change in distribution of demography and agricultural crop types will take place in temperate and tropical regions due to climate change considering present rate of consumption of resources? What are those safer regions which will be the most favorite destinations of migrants affected by global warming, vulnerable events and ground water depletion?

The increasing consumption of earth resources like fossil fuel, mining, pumping out ground water etc. is creating disturbances inside earth and in earth’s atmosphere. These disturbances in earth systems will attract vulnerable events like earthquakes, tsunami, cyclones etc. Regions prone to these vulnerable events will be devastated which will force people to migrate to safer places.

On the other hand, due to global warming and melting of ice, regions like Scandinavia and Russia will get more agricultural land and greenery. This will attract migration of people towards northern parts of these countries. Even people from other parts of Europe, Africa and Asia may shift towards these areas in due course of time. Another factor affecting migration will be sinking of islands due to sea level rise.

Depletion of ground water will also be major factor affecting migration to other places within region or in some cases out of the region (if severity increases). In tropical region like south Asia, glaciers are melting; rivers are not having enough water to recharge the ground water. The uncertainty of monsoon rains is increasing. The rain water is not properly trapped to recharge the ground water, most of it goes as run off. Very soon in these regions, conditions will be so that people will be forced to leave agriculture and migrate to some other places. This will also affect the agricultural patterns and population distribution.

I believe that during next decade, we must focus our research to search the answers of these questions in order to prepare future generation ready against natural and man made disasters. One of the steps of action may be to develop multidisciplinary programs and teams of scientists and modelers including social scientists, political scientists, geophysicists, ecologists and atmospheric and agricultural scientists etc.

Given the escalating severe impacts on the hydrological cycle, how can we effectively respond to the challenge of climate change adaptation?

Water is the primary medium through which climate change will affect livelihoods, shape economies and alter the natural environment. Recent climate research shows that impacts on the hydrological cycle are likely to be more serious than originally thought. For this reason an assessment of how the resource is managed by humans is crucial.

How can the earth’s vegetation and biota be used to help offset already high atmospheric CO2 levels in order to minimize or mitigate the effects of climate change on the biosphere?

Because Earth’s climate is already changing, and regardless of how policy changes human inputs of CO2, we are going to lose biodiversity if we do not start to understand how we can used biodiversity to mitigate high atmospheric CO2. We already have examples of the use of forests and tree planting to bank carbon. However, a large component of biota occurs in grasslands and earlier successional systems which are not being promoted as potential carbon banks. If we procede to approach the climate change issue with just planting trees we will end up losing those biota that cannot live in forests.

Issue of resilience of our Oceans vis-a-vis climate and geosphere/biosphere changes, as all sort of pressures (natural and anthropogenic) are affecting today the Oceans Realm? How much resilient our Oceans will be for the next coming decades?

Important issue as oceans constitute more than 2/3 of our planet.
Do we have good models of prediction to assist decison-makers in their planning of oceans management and governance?

How do different forms of pollution including increased nutrients and changes in the trophic dynamics of marine ecosystems affect the oceans ability to regulate climate?

Oceans are the key driver of climate change globally, yet pollution into marine and coastal waters continues as does over-exploitation – if we are to address all of these issues in an integrated way, then we need to know how these activities impact on climate change processes now and in the future.

What political and economic changes can reverse climate change and the loss of biodiversity?

The world’s economy depends upon a system of capital accumulation that does not support a sustainable relationship between the nature and the human communities. Natural resources are exploited above the threshold to sustainability. Political changes are required.

How will climate change effect the major Cycles of Carbon, Nitrogen and Sulphur and what kind of feedback on organism level is expected?

The increase of C02 has major consequences for plant growth (mainly positive) but can have drastic effects in oceans (reduction of pH). Only little is known about how the other cycles (Nitrogen/Sulphur) are effected by the increase of CO2.