The world’s big rivers are drying up

The National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is about to release a study in the May 15th issue of the Meteorological Journal of Science in America, that shows that climate change has affected the flow of some of the world’s largest rivers.

According to the NCAR, over two thirds of the 925 rivers that were studied from 1948-2005 have reduced water flow as a direct result of global warming and climate change.

With a growing population in many of the river regions studied, including the Niger in Africa, the Yellow River in China, and the Ganges in India, reduced water flow can create a shortage of agricultural food and water.

As the rivers coincide with areas that have many dependent poor people, this could severely impact the quality of life and amount of deaths that occur daily in these underdeveloped world regions.

While scientists have suspected that climate change has affected river flow in most regions across the world, the study by the NCAR is the first to present supporting evidence.

Outside of creating water shortages for crops and people, many of the rivers included in the study also provide freshwater discharges in the world’s major oceans.

The Ganges, Niger, and the Yellow River are three major rivers that provide discharge, and were shown to provide less discharge in correspondence to drying out.

This poses ecological threats as many ecosystems in the ocean depend on the minerals and nutrients that are found in freshwater discharge.

Additionally, freshwater discharge flow plays an elemental role in ocean circulation patterns which in turn play a large role in determining the world’s climate.

Despite the findings that many rivers across the world have produced less water, several other key rivers such as the Yangtze in China and the Brahmaputra in Asia are at least stable or reporting slightly increased water flow.

It is suspected this is because of glacier runoff as they melt in the Himalayans but scientists predict they will lose volume in the future as the glaciers disappear following the trend of rivers located more centrally in the world.

The study included major river sources from every continent but Antarctica which cumulate to make about 75% of the world’s water flow.