Impact of Climatic Changes on Pollution Levels

Evolution of river pollutions under the influence of local hydro-climatic changes - the example of the Bienne River (Jura Mountain, France)

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-5986 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Elie Dhivert ◽

François Gibon ◽

Karine Hochart ◽

Bertrand Devillers

Keyword(s):

Climatic Changes ◽

Fish Mortality ◽

Risk Level ◽

Rainfall Regime ◽

Pollution Levels ◽

Resilience Process ◽

Wide Range ◽

River Quality ◽

High Concentrations ◽

The Impact

<p>In application of the EU Water Framework Directive, many actions have been undertaken in order to reduce pollution levels in river systems. However, for certain catchments, the resilience process is not occurring as expected. In the Bienne River basin, metals discharge has plummeted since the 1990s, following the implementation of a better industrial waste management, as well as an important industrial restructuring. Nevertheless, this river has been regularly affected by massive fish mortality over the 2012-2019 period. This phenomenon, never identified before, is becoming recurrent. Organic tissues sampled in dead fish contained high concentrations of metals in association with other toxics. In this context, this study introduces a transdisciplinary approach in order to: (i) analyse spatial and temporal evolutions of pollutions in the Bienne River, (ii) evaluate potential ecotoxicological impacts associated, (iii) identify interactions with local hydro-climatic changes. Metallic and organic pollutants were analysed over different stations and at multi-temporal scales, associating sedimentary archives, suspended matters and passive water samplers. These analyses highlight the impact on the river quality of both current and legacy pollutions, particularly during prolonged low-water periods and high discharge events. Ecotoxicological analyses emphasize a severe risk level in the case of polluted sediments remobilization, especially because of heavy metals and PAH contamination. Geochemical evidence of such remobilization events has been recorded over the last decade in a sedimentary core sampled in the downstream part of the Bienne River. Hydrological data recorded in the Bienne River gauging stations since 1971 attests of an important year-to-year variability, although changes in the river discharge distribution are ongoing. Data has shown a higher frequency of both the lowest and the highest outflows over the 2012-2019 period compared to the rest of the hydrological recording. Hydro-climatic variables coming from in-situ measurements and satellite data (GPM-IMERG6) has also shown significant modifications in the rainfall regime over this period, especially in the augmentation of dry spells and heavy rainfall episodes. Those modifications agree well with the discharge change observations. This study brings out knock-on impacts of combined geochemical, ecotoxicological and hydro-sedimentary issues on the fate of aquatic ecosystems, especially under the influence of local hydro-climatic changes and their implications on hydrological regimes. Those results aim at reducing uncertainties concerning the evolution of the river quality by highlighting such a tipping point for environmental conditions. In addition, such a study helps us to grasp the complexity of local stakes regarding the multiple interests of a wide range of stakeholders and policy makers involved on the field.</p>

Download Full-text

Relations between Climatic Changes and High Pollution Levels in Bulgaria

Open Journal of Applied Sciences ◽

10.4236/ojapps.2016.67040 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 06 (07) ◽

pp. 386-401 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Zahari Zlatev ◽

Ivan Dimov ◽

Krassimir Georgiev

Keyword(s):

Climatic Changes ◽

Pollution Levels ◽

High Pollution

Download Full-text

Influence of climatic changes on pollution levels in the Balkan Peninsula

Computers & Mathematics with Applications ◽

10.1016/j.camwa.2012.07.006 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 65 (3) ◽

pp. 544-562 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Z. Zlatev ◽

K. Georgiev ◽

I. Dimov

Keyword(s):

Balkan Peninsula ◽

Climatic Changes ◽

Pollution Levels

Download Full-text

LARGE-SCALE AIR POLLUTION MODELING IN EUROPE UNDER DIFFERENT CLIMATIC SCENARIOS

International Journal of Big Data Mining for Global Warming ◽

10.1142/s2630534819500098 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 01 (02) ◽

pp. 1950009 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

ZAHARI ZLATEV ◽

IVAN DIMOV ◽

ISTVÁN FARAGÓ ◽

KRASSIMIR GEORGIEV ◽

ÁGNES HAVASI

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

High Speed ◽

Large Scale ◽

Chemical Species ◽

Modern Society ◽

Climatic Changes ◽

Human Beings ◽

Pollution Levels ◽

Pollution Modeling ◽

The Impact

The treatment of large-scale air pollution models is not only important for modern society, but also an extremely difficult task. Five important physical and chemical processes: (1) horizontal advection, (2) horizontal diffusion, (3) vertical exchange, (4) emission of different pollutants and (5) dry and wet deposition have to be united and handled together. This leads to huge computational problems which have to be treated on modern high-speed parallel architectures by using advanced numerical methods. The computational difficulties are vastly increased when such models are used in the investigation of the impact of climatic changes on high pollution levels that are often exceeding certain critical concentrations and, therefore, are becoming harmful for plants, animals and human beings. There are two major reasons for the great increase in computational difficulties: (a) it is necessary to run the discretized data on fine spatial grid models over very long time-periods consisting of many consecutive years and (b) different scenarios are to be used in order to investigate the sensitivity of the pollution levels to systematic variations of several carefully selected key parameters. How the major difficulties can be resolved is explained here. Furthermore, many results are presented in order to demonstrate the ability of the model to handle successfully the huge computational tasks by using fine space and time discretization and by applying a chemical scheme with many chemical species participating in several hundred chemical reactions. Our results indicate that the climatic changes will often lead to some increases in the pollution levels.

Download Full-text