Pollutants climate change impacts

Keywords Basin management, Climate change impacts, Downscaling, Hydrological modelling, Pollutants... 

Grimalt JO, Catalan J, Fernandez P, Pina B, Munthe J (2010) Distribution of persistent organic pollutants and mercury in freshwater ecosystems under changing climate conditions. In Keman M, Battarbee RW, Moss B (eds) Climate change impacts on freshwater ecosystems. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, pp 180-202 (Chapter 8)... 

One challenge in understanding the future liabilities associated with climate change is that scenarios can be divided into two separate yet interrelated categories. The first is greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, and the second is climate change impact scenarios. Because of the indirect nature of atmospheric carbon pollution, it is important to understand the complex relationship of the two and the limitations of defining that relationship. 

Mankind s impact on the global climate and whether pollution from modern energy use is indeed warming the Earth have become important issues for national and international policy makers. Political pressure and public sentiment are based on complex data sets that, alone, cannot tell the whole story. The ultimate question is whether our climate is becoming warmer because of the slow build-up in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations (1). The answer is not clear, because much of what we know about global climate change is inferred from historical evidence of uncertain quality. 

Here, we discuss these issues within the context of the Ebro river basin and one of its sub-catchments, the Gallego. We present climate change scenarios for the basin and discuss the integration of climate change scenarios in general with several aspects of the Ebro s hydrology and also discuss potential impacts of climate change on pollution. 

Climate change will impact on water quality and quantity and hydromorphology and may thus remobilise historic pollutants from river bottom sediments and/or floodplain soils. However, the extent of this impact is still largely unclear and there is also a lack of feasible measures to mitigate the (potential) impacts. 

Integration of climate change scenarios with several aspects of the Ebro s hydrology and potential impacts of climate change on pollution... 

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