How will the growing human population change the land cover (albedo), water and atmosphere composition in the next 20-50 years and what feedbacks will occur as symptoms of our planet resilience?

Feedbacks will create new conditions for our species that will have to evolve to adapt to polluted air, polluted water and a changed climate. The sooner we start paying attention to these feedbacks that will cause diseases, migrations, wars, famines, the sooner we can invest in creative strategies to improve or maintain human’s livelihoods and stop wasting time and energy on useless pursuits.

What is the relationship between the variables of climate change and the availability of water for the complex of services of inland water systems?

Multiple data and researches in drainage areas in different continents indicate an important reduction in the water availability in the fluvial and lentics systems. An example is in Mexico where almost all the river basins except the humid tropical zone (5% of the territory) have undergone an important reduction in the draining, particularly serious in the arid and semi-arid zones (60% of the territory); in the temperate and warm subhumid zones (35% of the territory) this same phenomenon even occurs, like in the river basin of the Santiago river in the center-West of the country, with a reduction of the draining between the 30 to 60% that includes several stepped dams. Derivative of the answer to the investigation, strategies will be able to establish in order to optimize the management of the river basins within the complex of services derived of the inland water systems.

Guadalupe de la Lanza-Espino and Jose Luis García-Calderón

How much potable water can be extracted from sea water that is safe to drink?

Different experiments are being performed to obtain potable water from sea water. Procedure seems to be expensive. No records are available about its side effects, if any. It is not known that such drinking water will be cheaper or not. If it is cheaper to make then third world countries, poor countries many african countries and asian countries would benefit.

How can an environmental audit be conducted globally?

To cover up certain areas such as waste management, energy conservation, water conservation, green cover, pollution level, recycling processes, etc. are needed to be tackle on top priority level in order to sustain earth system. Such type of works should be encourage and make available for public. Which is possible by global environment audits.

How much the Himalaya has been responsible for the present day climate of South Asia and how is it going to influence the future climate of South Asia?

The Himalayas are the storehouse of glaciers that feed the perennial rivers. A large population of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar survive on the perennial rivers for drinking water, agriculture and minor/major hydro power generation. Any change in the health of glaciers would have cascading effect on the large population of South Asia. Attention of earth scientits, particularly climatologists, is demanded to study the past, present and future climate of the Himalayas.

What consequences can happen due to Himalayan Glacier melting? How much do we care about it?

Glaciers high in the Himalayas are dwindling faster than anyone thought, putting nearly a billion people living in South Asia in peril of losing their water supply. Throughout India, China, and Nepal, some 15,000 glaciers speckle the Tibetan Plateau, some of the highest land in the world. There, perched in thin, frigid air up to 7,200 meters (23,622 feet) above sea level, the ice might seem secluded from the effects of global warming.
But just the opposite is proving true, according to new research published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

“At the highest elevations, we’re seeing something like an average of 0.3 degrees Centigrade warming per decade,” Thompson said. “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects 3 degrees of warming by 2100. But that’s at the surface; up at the elevations where these glaciers are there could be almost twice as much, almost 6 degrees.” The finding has ominous implications for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on the waters of the Naimona’nyi and other glaciers for their livelihoods. Across the region, no one know just how much water the Himalayas have left, but Thompson said it’s dwindling fast.

“You can think of glaciers kind of like water towers, ” he said. “They collect water from the monsoon in the wet season, and release it in the dry season. But how effective they are depends on how much water is in the towers.”

How water is transformed globally between the ocean, land and the atmosphere?

Water is the most important nature factor for human life. It influences the human life directly. It is also the main driver of the climate. Although we do not have the global water budget information yet, but very close to have it. What we need is from space to monitor globally the atmosphere water content, the ocean salinity, the precipitation, the land soil moisture, the ground water run off, the polar ice melt, the underground water distribution and variations. We already have GRACE mission to monitoring the underground water distribution and variations, the polar ice melting, SMOS mission and SMAP mission will be launched soon to monitoring the land soil moisture and ocean salinity, FY3 and other weather satellites to monitoring the atmosphere water content, etc. However, the data are not integrately studied together and a more complete constelation of these kinds of satellites with higher tempo resolution are needed if we want a complete answer of this question. A global cooperation with participation of many governments like US, Europe, Russia, China, Japan and India is necessary!

What is the contribution of groundwater to ocean and seas?

Understanding and modelling the oceans and seas water cycle requires quantifying all water fluxes entering or leaving the ocean system. Groundwater fluxes are not well known and their underestimation can cause overestimation of other fluxes or errors in the ocean modelling calibration.

How to save each and every drop of rain water to raise underground water level in next decade.

Shortage of drinking water has already become a serious problem in many countries particularly third world countries, African countries, Gulf countries and many south Asian countries and even Oz. There could be “water war” in the future. Efforts to save every drop of rain water so that underground water level will rise up. Unfortunately most of the rain water drain from river to sea and to oceans which is of no use for us to drink. Therefore time has come to start not thinking but to do something so that rain water can be saved by rain water harvesting in cities, making ponds, lakes, small dams, large dams etc. wherever possible. Because WATER means life and life means Worlds Animal,Trees, Environment Resources,(WATER).

What are the responses and feedbacks of the Tibetan Plateau to recent global warming?

Known as the “Roof of the World”, the Tibetan Plateau extends a vast area of around 2.5 million square kilometers, and has an average elevation of over 4,500 meters. Its seasonal temperature fluctuation is the major driving force of the Asian Monsoons which affect near half of the world’s population. It is the world’s third largest store of ice after Arctic and Antarctic; and it originates almost all of Asia’s major rivers – the Yellow River, the Yangtze, the Mekong, the Salween, the Indus, and the Yarlung Tsangpo, which downstream becomes the Brahmaputra. The Plateau’s glaciers are retreating and permafrost shrinking with a rising temperature of about 0.3 °C per decade that has been going on for over an half century. There are evidences that the Tibetan Plateau and its ecosystem are highly sensitive to climate change. There are also evidences that the climate driven changes in the Plateau pose great impacts on the regional socioeconomics and on the climate system itself. For examples, the land cover change due to the abrupt warming will change the radiation budget of the ground surface; the erosion of permafrost will perturbed soil carbon store and release additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The whole picture of the responses and feedbacks to climate change of this 3rd pole of the globe remains poorly understood. The wellbeing of the Tibetan Plateau in a changing climate would affect not only people who live on the Plateau, but also those live downstream from the rivers flowing off the Plateau and those on the mercy of Asian Monsoons.