Climate Change and the European Water Dimension

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Climate Change and the European Water Dimension Chapter VI.F.1 Climate Change, Extreme Events and POPs – an example Key Points • The mobilisation, distribution and fate of chemical pollutants and pathogens through floodwaters are a source of public concern. • In the 2002 Elbe flood, no significant increase was measured in levels of PCDDs/Fs and PCBs in river and floodplain sediments after the flood with few exceptions. Concentrations of trace metals, hydrocarbons, PAHs, organochloro-pesticides, and PCBs exceeded German guidelines only in a few isolated cases, without distinct threats to human health. • The 2002 flooding event did not result in a large-scale contamination of the areas affected by the floodwaters. The relatively high contamination levels found in the floodplains represent the historic dimension of repeated flood events in upstream industrial regions. • Floods have the capacity to re-mobilize and re-distribute large amounts of contaminants; increased incidence or severity of floods has the potential to cause widespread contamination. 202
Climate Change and the European Water Dimension Chapter VI.F.2 Climate Change and Global Persistent Organic Chemicals Key Points • The atmosphere is the ‘conduit’ through which POPs can move from atmospheric emission sources via deposition to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, several processes accelerated by climate warmng. • A net transfer of POPs from warm source/usage areas to colder remote regions (i.e. a global re-distribution) is documented. Repeated temperature-controlled air-surface exchange provides the key mechanism for this so-called ‘cold condensation’ process. Furthermore, ‘global fractionation’ may occur, whereby different POPs travel different distances from a common source area. • Temperature is an important driver to the global cycling of POPs through its influence on emissions from primary and secondary sources, gas-particle distributions, reaction rates, air-surface exchange (inland and marine waters, vegetation, soils, snow/ice) and global transport. • ‘Inter-annual variations of POP air concentrations from the Great Lakes region and the Arctic have been strongly associated with atmospheric low-frequency fluctuations, notably the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the El-Nino- Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Pacific North American (PNA) pattern. This suggests interactions between climate variation and the global distribution of POPs….” Ma et al., 2004. 207
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Climate Change and the European Water Dimension

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