Feature Article

Given the extraordinary proliferation of seawater desalination plants, Israel’s transition to become a country that almost exclusively relies on desalination for municipal water supply is instructive as a case study, especially given concerns about the technology’s prodigious carbon footprint. This article offers a detailed description of the country’s desal experience with a focus on the associated energy requirements, environmental policies and perspectives of decision makers. Israel’s desalination plants are arguably the most energy-efficient in the world.

Inorganic phosphorus (P)-solubilizing bacteria (IPSB) and organic P-mineralizing bacteria (OPMB) were isolated from bacteria that were first extracted from the rhizosphere soil of a natural wetland and then grown on either tricalcium phosphate or lecithin medium. The solubilizing of inorganic P was the major contribution to P availability, since the isolated bacteria released much more available P from inorganic tricalcium phosphate than lecithin.

Original Source

Russia and Ukraine are countries with relatively large untapped agricultural potentials, both in terms of abandoned agricultural land and substantial yield gaps. Here we present a comprehensive assessment of Russian and Ukrainian crop production potentials and we analyze possible impacts of their future utilization, on a regional as well as global scale. To this end, the total amount of available abandoned land and potential yields in Russia and Ukraine are estimated and explicitly implemented in an economic agricultural sector model.

Uncertainties in the impact assessments of climate anomalies and extremes on crop yields arise from the complexity and the limited knowledge of the involved biophysical processes, the variable accuracy of the meteorological and field data, and the limited information on the local agronomical practices.

Original Source

Satellite altimetry has shown that global mean sea level has been rising at a rate of ∼3 ± 0.4 mm/y since 1993. Using the altimeter record coupled with careful consideration of interannual and decadal variability as well as potential instrument errors, we show that this rate is accelerating at 0.084 ± 0.025 mm/y2, which agrees well with climate model projections. If sea level continues to change at this rate and acceleration, sea-level rise by 2100 (∼65 cm) will be more than double the amount if the rate was constant at 3 mm/y.

Highly variable water regimes, such as California’s, contain distinctive problems in the pursuit of secure timing, quantities and distributions of highly variable flows. Their formal and informal systems of water control must adapt rapidly to forceful and unpredictable swings on which the survival of diversified ecosystems, expansive settlement patterns and market-driven economies depends. What constitutes resilient water governance in these high-variability regimes?

The Warm Arctic–cold Siberia surface temperature pattern during recent boreal winter is suggested to be triggered by the ongoing decrease of Arctic autumn sea ice concentration and has been observed together with an increase in mid-latitude extreme events and a meridionalization of tropospheric circulation. However, the exact mechanism behind this dipole temperature pattern is still under debate, since model experiments with reduced sea ice show conflicting results.

The Lancet Countdown tracks progress on health and climate change and provides an independent assessment of the health effects of climate change, the implementation of the Paris Agreement, and the health implications of these actions. It follows on from the work of the 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change, which concluded that anthropogenic climate change threatens to undermine the past 50 years of gains in public health, and conversely, that a comprehensive response to climate change could be “the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century”.

Rotavirus is the most common cause of diarrheal disease among children under 5. Especially in South Asia, rotavirus remains the leading cause of mortality in children due to diarrhea. As climatic extremes and safe water availability significantly influence diarrheal disease impacts in human populations, hydroclimatic information can be a potential tool for disease preparedness.

Normally groundwater recharge is estimated using methods based on water balance, water table fluctuations, fixed factor of annual rainfall and tracer movement. In many of these methods water stored in the vadose zone and evapotranspiration are not accounted properly. These factors control groundwater recharge to a large extent, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions which are normally characterized by a deep water table, thick vadose zone and high evapotranspiration.