Last week, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography hosted a conference “Water in a Warming World.”  The attendees included experts in hydrological and climate sciences, economics, and public policy.  The participants looked at building a lasting scientific community focused on water resources in regional watersheds that are especially hard hit by climate change, including the Western US, north-western China, India, and possibly Africa.  UK participants included Nick Reynard from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, William Ingram from Oxford University/Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research and the Met Office, Wouter Buytaert from Imperial College London and Roger Calow from the Overseas Development Institute/ British Geological Survey. 

Many of the participants signed the below declaration to demonstrate their dedication to water security issues at the climate talks in Copenhagen this December. 

La Jolla Declaration on Water Security as the Climate Changes

Human-induced climate change threatens the water security of communities, countries and continents. Droughts, floods and the unreliability of water resources will be exacerbated, impacting our ability to feed the world and sustain its ecosystems.

Over the past few decades evidence has been accumulating that rising temperatures and other consequences of human activity are increasing atmospheric water, altering precipitation patterns – intensity and extremes, reducing snow cover, changing soil moisture and runoff, melting glaciers and ice sheets, and raising sea levels.  As global warming and other human influences continue, we expect these changes to accelerate in the coming decades.

Action is required now.  Water security should be the centerpiece of mitigation and adaptation efforts, including fast-action strategies to reduce black carbon, HFCs, and other non-CO2 forcers, to complement aggressive cuts in CO2.

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