Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
programs, small and large, have been developed as a result. The
United Nations Millennium Declaration, passed by the General
Assembly in 2000, affi rmed the right of all human beings to safe
water. In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly reaffi rmed
that right with a resolution that called on member states and inter-
national organizations to offer funding, technology, and resources
to help poorer countries escalate efforts to provide clean, accessi-
ble, and affordable drinking water and sanitation for everyone.
9
THE WORLD'S ECOSYSTEM
Whether you agree with the UN initiatives or not, and beyond the
moral issue of access to water, the world is an ecosystem where cli-
mate, water, and weather are intertwined. What happens in some-
one else's backyard on the other side of the globe can and does
affect what happens here.
Pacifi c to Atlantic and Beyond
Climate patterns, winds, and weather spread around the world
and can affect U.S. water supplies. Drought in Asia, Africa, or the
Middle East, for example, can generate dust storms, which end up
as massive dust clouds in the atmosphere. Those clouds cross the
Pacifi c Ocean on wind currents and rain down dust, pollution, and
dirt across the United States and beyond. The United States even
tracks those dust clouds.
Follow the current trail of dust around the globe online via NASA's
Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer, or TOMS (http://jwocky.gsfc
.nasa.gov/aerosols/aerosols_v8.html).
Dusty trail.
Those dust clouds also can affect rainfall amounts.
They can clog the atmosphere and prevent minute raindrops in the
atmosphere from growing large enough and heavy enough to fall
to the ground as precipitation, impeding Earth's natural ability to
replenish its water supplies. That natural process is known as the
hydrologic
or
water cycle,
which we'll detail later in this chapter.
