一种新型海洋温差能海水淡化装置

水源与能源是现代社会发展必不可少的两种重要资源.地球上最充足的水资源是海水,海水淡化技术已是解决全球淡水资源危机的重要途径,而在能源日趋紧张的将来,开发利用新能源将倍加受人瞩目.介绍了海洋温差能的发展及主要海水淡化技术,提出了一种利用可再生能源——海洋温差能进行海水淡化的新型海水淡化装置,给出了海水淡化系统的系统图.     

Impacts of Climatic Change on River Flow Regimes in the UK

Much has been written in recent years about the potential threats posed by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. This paper summarizes the implications of global warming for hydrological processes in general and river flow characteristics in the UK in particular, emphasizing the present high degree of uncertainty. Current climate change scenarios for the UK imply that rainfall between autumn and spring will increase, and this may have beneficial implications for UK water resources. However, the effect of this increase may be outweighed by higher evapotranspiration. Average annual runoff in a catchment in southern UK may be reduced by around 5% by the middle of the next century, but this estimate is very uncertain: runoff may reduce by 30% or increase by 30%. Runoff in northern and western UK is likely to show a slight increase (but with similarly large confidence intervals). It is probable that river flows in the UK will be much more concentrated in winter than at present. The effect of a given climate change scenario on monthly flow regimes depends on the current summer water balance and on catchment geological conditions.     

The impact of climate change on reservoir water quality and water treatment plant operations: a UK case study

A simplified climate change impact assessment tool (SCIAT) has been developed to address the specific needs of the water industry and provides a tool to translate climate change projections into ‘real world’ impacts. Its application is demonstrated in this study to assess the impacts of climate change on the reservoir water quality and water treatment plant (WTP) operations at Grafham Water in the east of England. The primary aim is to provide WTP operators with knowledge of the potential impacts and associated probabilities of occurrence of climate change, enabling them to make informed, risk‐based adaptation and planning decisions. Using a series of coupled hydrological and water‐quality models, it is likely that there will be a decline in average reservoir water quality. Climate change will also have an impact on WTP operations, but these will be manageable within the current operational parameters.     

Evaluating the effects of climate change on the water resources for the city of Birmingham,UK

Climate change is expected to affect precipitation patterns and may therefore impact upon water resource availability. The city of Birmingham in central England receives its public water supply from a catchment in the Elan Valley, mid‐Wales. Baseline and future climate projections generated from a stochastic weather generator within the United Kingdom Climate Projections 2009 and a daily soil water balance model (WaSim) were used to determine the potential impacts of climate change on hydrologically effective rainfall (HER). Annual HER is likely to decrease from baseline conditions (> 90% likelihood that HER will be reduced), with more frequent and persistent very dry spells and increasing seasonality. It is concluded that climate change will put additional stress on water resources for the city of Birmingham so that, coupled with expected increases in demand, adaptation measures to increase supply and/or reduce demand are likely to be needed.     

Debating the future of comfort: environmental sustainability, energy consumption and the indoor environment

Vast quantities of energy are consumed in heating and cooling to provide what are now regarded as acceptable standards of thermal comfort. In the UK as in a number of other countries, there is a real danger that responses in anticipation of global warming and climate change - including growing reliance on air-conditioning - will increase energy demand and CO₂ emissions even further. This is an appropriate moment to reflect on the history and future of comfort, both as an idea and as a material reality. Based on interviews and discussions with UK policy makers and building practitioners involved in specifying and constructing what will become the indoor environments of the future, four possible scenarios are identified each with different implications for energy and resource consumption. By actively promoting debate about the indoor environment and associated ways of life, it may yet be possible to avoid becoming locked into social and technical trajectories that are ultimately unsustainable. The aim of this paper is to inspire and initiate just such a discussion through demonstrating that comfort is a highly negotiable socio-cultural construct.     

Modelling the Impacts of Climatic Change on Water Resources

Following the prolonged drought at the end of the 1980s in the south east of the UK, Anglian Water undertook (a) to review the reliable yields of their resource systems and (b) to investigate the potential risks associated with alternative future investment programmes. One of the major identifiable risks is climate change, and there is a clear need to understand how different scenarios of climate change could affect the reliable output of existing sources, and thereby affect investment programmes.
This paper highlights the approach which was adopted to model climate change impacts on rainfall, and on the limitations which exist for this type of assessment.     

Priority water research questions as determined by UK practitioners and policy makers

Several recent studies have emphasised the need for a more integrated process in which researchers, policy makers and practitioners interact to identify research priorities. This paper discusses such a process with respect to the UK water sector, detailing how questions were developed through inter-disciplinary collaboration using online questionnaires and a stakeholder workshop. The paper details the 94 key questions arising, and provides commentary on their scale and scope. Prioritisation voting divided the nine research themes into three categories: (1) extreme events (primarily flooding), valuing freshwater services, and water supply, treatment and distribution [each > 150/1109 votes]; (2) freshwater pollution and integrated catchment management [100-150 votes] and; (3) freshwater biodiversity, water industry governance, understanding and managing demand and communicating water research [50-100 votes]. The biggest demand was for research to improve understanding of intervention impacts in the water environment, while a need for improved understanding of basic processes was also clearly expressed, particularly with respect to impacts of pollution and aquatic ecosystems. Questions that addressed aspects of appraisal, particularly incorporation of ecological service values into decision making, were also strongly represented. The findings revealed that sustainability has entered the lexicon of the UK water sector, but much remains to be done to embed the concept operationally, with key sustainability issues such as resilience and interaction with related key sectors, such as energy and agriculture, relatively poorly addressed. However, the exercise also revealed that a necessary condition for sustainable development, effective communication between scientists, practitioners and policy makers, already appears to be relatively well established in the UK water sector.     

Debating the future of comfort: environmental sustainability,energy consumption and the indoor environment

Vast quantities of energy are consumed in heating and cooling to provide what are now regarded as acceptable standards of thermal comfort. In the UK as in a number of other countries, there is a real danger that responses in anticipation of global warming and climate change – including growing reliance on air-conditioning – will increase energy demand and CO₂ emissions even further. This is an appropriate moment to reflect on the history and future of comfort, both as an idea and as a material reality. Based on interviews and discussions with UK policy makers and building practitioners involved in specifying and constructing what will become the indoor environments of the future, four possible scenarios are identified each with different implications for energy and resource consumption. By actively promoting debate about the indoor environment and associated ways of life, it may yet be possible to avoid becoming locked into social and technical trajectories that are ultimately unsustainable. The aim of this paper is to inspire and initiate just such a discussion through demonstrating that comfort is a highly negotiable socio-cultural construct.     

Groundwater Resources in the Lagan Valley Sandstone Aquifer, Northern Ireland

Beneath Belfast and the Lagan Valley lies Northern Ireland's most important aquifer, the Triassic Sherwood Sandstone. Up to 300 m in thickness and with a total abstraction of around 31 000 m³/d, it is a modest aquifer by UK and world standards; nonetheless, it is an important local water source. The use of this aquifer system as a water supply will undoubtedly increase as growth of industry and population continues in the Belfast metropolitan area. Even with the mesic climate of Ireland, groundwater mining of this aquifer system is already occurring, and thus there is a need for detailed aquifer planning and protection to be implemented in order to preserve this resource for the future.     

Towards risk‐based water resources planning in England and Wales under a changing climate

The publication of the UKCP09 climate change projections for the United Kingdom provides the opportunity for more rigorous inclusion of climate change uncertainty in water resources planning. We set out how the current approach to incorporating climate change and other uncertainties in water resources planning may be updated to incorporate the UKCP09 projections. In an uncertain future, the frequency with which customers will experience water shortages cannot be predicted for sure, so a water company cannot predict definitely whether it will or will not fulfil its Level of Service commitments. We therefore go on to propose that the probability of failing to meet Level of Service (for given populations of customers) provides an appropriate metric of risk, which conveniently summarises the uncertainties associated with supply and demand, including climate change uncertainties. We sketch out how this risk metric can be calculated based upon simulation modelling of the water resource system.     

坚持绿色理念努力创建环境友好型、资源节约型社会——厦门市节约用水工作中的实践

本文从厦门淡水资源现状和水资源利用中存在的问题分析入手,探讨了绿色理念的内涵,系统地介绍了厦门在节约用水工作的成效和探索,以期全力促进环境友好型、资源节约型社会的建设。     

Climate impacts on European agriculture and water management in the context of adaptation and mitigation—The importance of an integrated approach

We review and qualitatively assess the importance of interactions and feedbacks in assessing climate change impacts on water and agriculture in Europe. We focus particularly on the impact of future hydrological changes on agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation and adaptation options. Future projected trends in European agriculture include northward movement of crop suitability zones and increasing crop productivity in Northern Europe, but declining productivity and suitability in Southern Europe. This may be accompanied by a widening of water resource differences between the North and South, and an increase in extreme rainfall events and droughts. Changes in future hydrology and water management practices will influence agricultural adaptation measures and alter the effectiveness of agricultural mitigation strategies. These interactions are often highly complex and influenced by a number of factors which are themselves influenced by climate. Mainly positive impacts may be anticipated for Northern Europe, where agricultural adaptation may be shaped by reduced vulnerability of production, increased water supply and reduced water demand. However, increasing flood hazards may present challenges for agriculture, and summer irrigation shortages may result from earlier spring runoff peaks in some regions. Conversely, the need for effective adaptation will be greatest in Southern Europe as a result of increased production vulnerability, reduced water supply and increased demands for irrigation. Increasing flood and drought risks will further contribute to the need for robust management practices.The impacts of future hydrological changes on agricultural mitigation in Europe will depend on the balance between changes in productivity and rates of decomposition and GHG emission, both of which depend on climatic, land and management factors. Small increases in European soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks per unit land area are anticipated considering changes in climate, management and land use, although an overall reduction in the total stock may result from a smaller agricultural land area. Adaptation in the water sector could potentially provide additional benefits to agricultural production such as reduced flood risk and increased drought resilience.The two main sources of uncertainty in climate impacts on European agriculture and water management are projections of future climate and their resulting impacts on water and agriculture. Since changes in climate, agricultural ecosystems and hydrometeorology depend on complex interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere and hydrological cycle there is a need for more integrated approaches to climate impacts assessments. Methods for assessing options which “moderate” the impact of agriculture in the wider sense will also need to consider cross-sectoral impacts and socio-economic aspects.     

The impact of climate change uncertainties on the performance of energy efficiency measures applied to dwellings

European Union and UK energy policy recognise the potential contribution the domestic sector can make in reducing energy consumption. In the UK, improvements to existing dwellings are likely to play a critical role in realising such potential.There is growing evidence that the global climate is changing. In the UK, projected climate changes could have a considerable impact on the thermal performance of the built environment and on measures implemented to improve such performance.Building simulations designed to investigate the potential impact of climate change uncertainties on the performance of insulation measures, applied retrospectively to an existing residential dwelling, suggest their effect could be considerable. Thermally, double glazing is the best option because although it is more sensitive than the others to climate change, it still delivers the highest savings in heating energy demand for the lowest induced cooling load. Loft insulation is the worst option in thermal terms.     

The impact of climate variability on water and energy demand: the case of South African local governments

There is a growing need to understand how climate change impacts not only on people's livelihoods but also on the level and cost of local government infrastructure required to provide basic commodities such as water and energy. In South Africa, few studies have examined the impact of climate change on operations of local governments. This paper examines the impact of rainfall variability on municipalities’ water and energy demand. A non‐linear relationship between water and energy demand and rainfall variability was found. The results suggest that, by influencing the operations and budgets of local governments, climate change is a real threat to local governments. The local governments need to be proactively involved in the efforts to adapt to and mitigate climate change. This is particularly important in developing countries where the impact of climate change is more severe than in developed countries, yet adaptation and mitigation capabilities in these countries are weak.     

Exogenous pressures and probabilistic assessment of risk and vulnerability of urban water systems in Ghana

ABSTRACT

Risk and vulnerability assessment of urban water systems can be extended to include several components. This work formulates a probable quantitative assessment of risk and vulnerability of urban water system based on climatic conditions and urban population growth. Climate change scenarios and population projections are used to estimate susceptibility to water supply systems’ risk and vulnerability. Quantile regression was used to establish the exponent correlation between the climate variables and population; and evaluate their consequential influences on urban water supply systems. We complemented the analysis with a probabilistic model to assess the robustness of urban water system that depends wholly on the climate for freshwater source. The study established that Climatic conditions, though uncertain, point to freshwater deficiency in the future. Moreover, population trends project a higher urban population thereby increasingly lowering water per capita and subsequently leading to doubtful urban water system’s resilience to the exogenous pressures.     

Perspectives on multi-benefit water reuse systems: A confluence of water and wastewater management planning

The multiple benefits of water reuse have yet to be fully realized in our urban water management systems. One pathway to optimal implementation is to plan for their integration with wider assets in water resource or drainage and wastewater management plans. This paper explores the perspectives of water resource and wastewater management planners. Qualitative data was gathered from a workshop organized by the Chartered Institution for Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) with 25 participants from England's Water Service Providers (WSPs), regulators (Ofwat and the Environment Agency) and consultants working within the UK water sector. The participants acknowledged that water reuse is relevant to both water resource and drainage and wastewater management planning, but that current regulatory and funding frameworks are constraining effective engagement between water resource and drainage and wastewater management planners by encouraging the development of separate plans. A general consensus of the participants was that it would be beneficial to include water reuse technology within current and future Water Resource Management Plans (WRMPs) and Drainage and Wastewater Management Plans (DWMPs). Participants suggested this could be developed through collaborative working partnerships and support from regulatory and funding frameworks that allow for the growth and development of innovative technologies and nature-based solutions. Participants also highlighted a stronger economic case could be made for water reuse technologies if the approach seeks to capture the wider benefits and not only the ‘best value’ solution. Societal acceptance and the availability of good quality data will be key to the successful adoption of any incentivized water reuse schemes.     

Global climate change and introduced species in United States forests

Introduced species already cause billions of dollars of damage annually in United States forests, plus massive ecological damage whose economic value has often not been estimated. The variety of impacts is staggering and includes herbivory, predation, disease, parasitism, competition, habitat destruction, hybridization, and changed disturbance regimes and nutrient cycles. How global climate change will affect these impacts has scarcely been assessed. Range changes of existing introduced species will be prominent, as many species' biogeographic ranges are set primarily by climate. Similarly, some species that might otherwise not have survived will be able to establish populations in a changed climate. It is more difficult to predict what the impacts of the introduced species will be. What is most needed are studies of the combined impacts of changing climate, CO2, and nutrients. Certain aspects of the biology of introduced species, such as evolution and autonomous dispersal, greatly complicate the prediction of spread and impact of introduced species.     

气候变化与水利工程安全

气候变化是目前重大的环境问题之一,水利工程是应对气候变化的重要措施,也直接受到气候变化的影响。以全球变暖为主要特征的气候变化通过加剧水文循环而影响大型水利工程的设计、运行和安全等。全球变暖将导致海平面上升,暴雨洪水和干旱极端事件的强度和频次增加,将影响到水利工程的相关设计标准的确定。极端低温和长期干旱高温等极端天气事件也将降低大坝安全系数。     

气候引导太阳能光伏玻璃的节能方向

由于温室气体的大量排放导致全球的气候发生剧烈变化,全球变暖致使人类用于采暖、制冷等资源能耗攀升,在传统能源日益枯竭的前提下,太阳能光伏发电则具有传统能源无法比拟的优势,国家倡导的节能环保政策给太阳能光伏电池发展带来前所未有的新机遇,而用于太阳能电池封装的超白压花玻璃也必将成为玻璃行业的新宠。该文阐述了太阳能光伏玻璃在未来节能领域中的应用前景。     

A review of the impact of climate change on future nitrate concentrations in groundwater of the UK

This paper reviews the potential impacts of climate change on nitrate concentrations in groundwater of the UK using a Source-Pathway-Receptor framework. Changes in temperature, precipitation quantity and distribution, and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations will affect the agricultural nitrate source term through changes in both soil processes and agricultural productivity. Non-agricultural source terms, such as urban areas and atmospheric deposition, are also expected to be affected. The implications for the rate of nitrate leaching to groundwater as a result of these changes are not yet fully understood but predictions suggest that leaching rate may increase under future climate scenarios. Climate change will affect the hydrological cycle with changes to recharge, groundwater levels and resources and flow processes. These changes will impact on concentrations of nitrate in abstracted water and other receptors, such as surface water and groundwater-fed wetlands. The implications for nitrate leaching to groundwater as a result of climate changes are not yet well enough understood to be able to make useful predictions without more site-specific data. The few studies which address the whole cycle show likely changes in nitrate leaching ranging from limited increases to a possible doubling of aquifer concentrations by 2100. These changes may be masked by nitrate reductions from improved agricultural practices, but a range of adaption measures need to be identified. Future impact may also be driven by economic responses to climate change.