World Water Day (March 22nd) and World Meteorological Day (March 23rd) came and passed with little fanfare outside of within the usual scientific circles, but the topic for the days - Climate and water - is so relevant to every social facet of life, and even more so today. Climate and water focus on climate change which respects no geographical or political boundaries and impacts health, development and security at a global level, and directly affect our natural environment (with respect to water) through droughts, flood, sea-level rises and glacier melting. Additionally water directly impacts global food production, and downstream, food security.

Normally, many sustainably minded individuals outside of the scientific arenas celebrate these days by bringing to light the themes from a social perspective while highlighting the global challenges … even crises. Even the mainstream news channels on these days give a few minutes of airplay and social media mentions. But this year, such activity was quiet (almost non-existent) as most are focused on another global crisis - the COVID-19 pandemic. This global crisis is consuming our thoughts and resources while radically disrupting lifestyles and moving at the speed of lightning! At a first glance, comparatively climate and water seem somewhat non-priority and unrelated elements of our global existence currently, but they really are not even in light of the new global crisis.

As we work earnestly to combat the pandemic, this article briefly dissects the cusps of interceptions of these three global crises – COVID-19, climate (& climate change), and water.

One of the necessary resources at the center of the pandemic is clean water. Two core pillars of combating COVID-19 we often hear are:

Wash your hands often for at least 20seconds each time
Isolate

Clean water is required for sanitizing hands and surfaces as we seek to care for our ill and reduce the risk of contraction amongst the healthy. More than 35% of the global population does not have access to basic hand-washing facilities and clean water in their homes ¹. Furthermore globally water has been scarce for this northern hemisphere winter season (December - February) and many prior seasons in many regions.

US Drought outlook for March 2020. Yellows indicate abnormal dryness whereas browns indicate exceptional drought. See US Drought outlook for more details.

The Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) is an indicator of drought conditions used by climatologist globally. The SPI for the Caribbean for the last season Dec 2019 - Feb 2020. Blue is wetter than usual areas whereas red indicates drier than usual. T… — The Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) is an indicator of drought conditions used by climatologist globally. The SPI for the Caribbean for the last season Dec 2019 - Feb 2020. Blue is wetter than usual areas whereas red indicates drier than usual. Taken from: The Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH)

Drought is the stealthy killer that doesn’t herald its presence like a pandemic. In fact, most don’t realize they are in a drought, until … they are in a drought! As we fight this pandemic, let’s be mindful of the current water resources. Tackling COVID-19 while maintaining a commitment to sustainability and more specifically, water conservation is quite possible. For example:

Be mindful that washing your hands for 20 seconds does not require a faucet being on for 20 seconds. Let’s turn off the faucet while soaping.
Jailbreak your toilet to conserve water. Jailbreak you say? YEA (let’s be honest, most of us don’t have one that conserves water at home like in the office)! A really simply hack is to put a couple bottles of water in the tank. This reduces the volume required to full the tank, and will still give you sufficient volume for a decent flush.
Be mindful of your household’s water usage especially if you have kids.
Encourage activities to pass the time while in isolation that are not water intensive. (Please feel free to comment and leave some more ideas around this!)

The second pillar of combating COVID-19 we often hear is isolate - “Stay home. Stay healthy.” Billions of people globally have been ordered to stay home, encouraged to isolate, and, work and school remotely. Many who were naysayers of remote work have now been effective at such. Travel has screeched to an as-needed bias, and many ground, air and sea transportation companies have significantly reduced their routes and frequencies. Climate change is closely coupled to global emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, methane, and tropospheric ozone, as well as anthropogenic aerosols. The global concentrations of the greenhouse gases over the years depict a consistent, unprecedented concentration in the atmosphere (CO ₂ at the highest ever on record, currently 414 ppm February 2020 reading for Mauna Lao Observatory – the longest on record starting back in the late 1950s).

Monthly mean carbon dioxide globally averaged from instruments at varying marine surface locations. The dashed red line with diamond symbols represents the monthly mean values, centered on the middle of each month. The black line with the square sym… — Monthly mean carbon dioxide globally averaged from instruments at varying marine surface locations. The dashed red line with diamond symbols represents the monthly mean values, centered on the middle of each month. The black line with the square symbols is the moving average of seven adjacent seasonal cycles centered on the month corrected for the average seasonal cycle, except for the first and last three and one-half years of the record. Taken from: Earth Systems Research Laboratory

Tropospheric nitrogen dioxide from satellite for Dec 2019 - Feb 2020. Blue indicates low concentration in a column where as red indicates high concentration in a column of atmosphere. Taken from TEMIS.

Atmospheric scientists collectively proved and agreed for decades that the rapidly increasing greenhouse concentrations are causing quick and intense warming of the atmosphere. This is leading to drastic changes in the globe’s natural environment that are impacting weather systems and patterns, sea-levels, ice-sheet development and maintenance, and plant and animal life, amongst others ². Furthermore, much of the anomalous increase in greenhouse gases have been linked to man and his activities – anthropogenic emissions. In many cities, emissions of greenhouse gases have significantly reduced, and air quality has improved over the last few weeks, most likely as emissions from transportation have drastically reduced ^3,4,5. The offset to those reduced emissions would be the increase of those emitted from energy used by households and by large corporations that maintain network infrastructure, cloud and data centers, in this temporary "work and school from home" state.

But I am hopeful for the future. Imagine if after the pandemic society was to maintain some aspects of limited transportation through more telecommuting options and better planned daily commuting to complete tasks while simultaneously large corporations commit to reduce their carbon footprint, similar to Microsoft’s recent commitment⁶. We might have the beginnings of a winning formula to combat the climate crisis!

Collectively, let us commit to the fight against climate change and commit to conserving water during and after this pandemic.