New Delhi: As per a new study, climate change may lead to dramatic increase in the rainfall and nitogen runoff too.
According to researchers, excessive nitrogen that mixes with rivers and estuaries can profoundly affect water systems; for example it can spur algal blooms, which have negative impacts on human health, aquatic ecosystems and the economy.
Future changes in precipitation patterns, induced by climate change, could strongly influence the degree of future nitrogen runoff; however most analyses have been limited to local regions and only rely on a small handful of climate models.
Eva Sinha and colleagues analysed anticipated changes in precipitation according to 21 different climate models, each of which was run for three climate scenarios (varying from aggressive efforts to mitigate climate change to a "business-as-usual" scenario), and two time periods (near future, 2031-2060; and far-future, 2071-2100).
Across the continental United States as a whole, models consistently estimate that nitrogen loading will increase under all three scenarios, for both time periods.
Under a far-future 'business-as-usual' scenario, the mean projected increase in nitrogen loading within the continental United States is 19 percent, with the Northeast, the upper Mississippi Atchafalaya River Basin and the Great Lakes basin experiencing the largest increases, the authors report.
(With Agency inputs)
