Drought: understanding and reducing vulnerability through monitoring and early warning systems

DrIVER project report. Report of the DrIVER workshop, 17 March 2015, Wallingford, UK

Drought forecasting isn\u27t just about water- to get smart we need health and financial data too

The Millennium Drought taught Australians many lessons about living under extremely dry conditions – not just about how to conserve water, but also about human suffering. In a drought, farmers find it more difficult to make an income, leading to mental health problems and raising the rate of male suicides. In the city, the impact is felt through water restrictions and more expensive infrastructure. With very dry conditions returning to Tasmania, central Queensland and western Victoria, are we better prepared for the next big drought? This is an issue not just for Australia, but across the world, from California, to England, to the Levant region in the eastern Mediterranean, which from 1998-2012 experienced its worst drought in 900 years

Stakeholder coinquiries on drought impacts, monitoring and early warning systems

Meeting summary

Climate change and water in the UK: past changes and future prospects

Climate change is expected to modify rainfall, temperature and catchment hydrological responses across the world, and adapting to these water-related changes is a pressing challenge. This paper reviews the impact of anthropogenic climate change on water in the UK and looks at projections of future change. The natural variability of the UK climate makes change hard to detect; only historical increases in air temperature can be attributed to anthropogenic climate forcing, but over the last 50 years more winter rainfall has been falling in intense events. Future changes in rainfall and evapotranspiration could lead to changed flow regimes and impacts on water quality, aquatic ecosystems and water availability. Summer flows may decrease on average, but floods may become larger and more frequent. River and lake water quality may decline as a result of higher water temperatures, lower river flows and increased algal blooms in summer, and because of higher flows in the winter. In communicating this important work, researchers should pay particular attention to explaining confidence and uncertainty clearly. Much of the relevant research is either global or highly localized: decision-makers would benefit from more studies that address water and climate change at a spatial and temporal scale appropriate for the decisions they mak

Climate change and water in the UK : past changes and future prospects: a climate change report card for water: Working technical paper

Climate change is expected to modify rainfall, temperatures and catchment hydrological responses across the world, and adapting to these water-related changes is a pressing challenge. This paper reviews the impact of climate change on water in the UK and looks at projections of future change. The natural variability of the UK climate makes change hard to detect; only historical increases in air temperature can be attributed to climate change, but over the last fifty years more winter rainfall has been falling in intense events. Future changes in rainfall and evapotranspiration could lead to changed flow regimes and impacts on water quality, aquatic ecosystems and the water available for use by people. Summer flows may decrease on average, but floods may become larger and more frequent. Water quality may decline as a result of higher water temperatures, lower river flows and increased algal blooms. Water demand may increase in response to higher summer temperatures, placing additional pressure on water resources. These changes affect many parts of everyday life, emphasising the importance of long-term adaptation that takes these possible changes into account

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Drought forecasting isn\u27t just about water- to get smart we need health and financial data too

The Millennium Drought taught Australians many lessons about living under extremely dry conditions – not just about how to conserve water, but also about human suffering. In a drought, farmers find it more difficult to make an income, leading to mental health problems and raising the rate of male suicides. In the city, the impact is felt through water restrictions and more expensive infrastructure. With very dry conditions returning to Tasmania, central Queensland and western Victoria, are we better prepared for the next big drought? This is an issue not just for Australia, but across the world, from California, to England, to the Levant region in the eastern Mediterranean, which from 1998-2012 experienced its worst drought in 900 years

Spontaneous autopolyploidy in the Acipenseriformes, with recommendations for management

Sturgeon and paddlefishes (Acipenseriformes) are cultured worldwide for commercial and conservation purposes. Over the past decade, we have learned many sturgeon culture programs experience spontaneous autopolyploidy, or the generation of triploidy without management intervention. Spontaneous autopolyploidy has been shown to negatively impact the physiology, reproductive development and fertility of sturgeon. Given these concerns, it is necessary to understand how it arises, how it affects production, and how it can be managed. The goal of this review is to describe the incidence of spontaneous autopolyploidy in sturgeon relative to other fishes, explain how spontaneous autopolyploids are formed, and report what is known about how triploidy and intermediate ploidy effect sturgeon reproductive development and physiology. We then describe four common methods for detecting spontaneous autopolyploids and their intermediate ploidy progeny and end with recommendations for reducing the incidence of spontaneous autopolyploidy based on the results of recent research. Although spontaneous autopolyploidy may never be completely eliminated from sturgeon culture, following these recommendations may significantly decrease its incidence

Drought indicators revisited: the need for a wider consideration of environment and society

Drought indicators are proliferating, but with little consideration of which are most meaningful for describing drought impacts. A number of recent reviews compare different drought indicators, but none assess which indicators are actually used in the many operational drought monitoring and early warning efforts, why they were selected, or whether they have been ‘ground-truthed,’ i.e., compared with information representing local drought conditions and/or impacts. Also lacking is a comprehensive assessment of the state of monitoring drought impacts. To help fill this gap, we combine a review of drought indicators and impacts with a survey of 33 providers of operational drought monitoring and early warning systems from global to regional scales. Despite considerable variety in the indicators used operationally, certain patterns emerge. Both the literature review and the survey reveal that impact monitoring does exist but has rarely been systematized. Efforts to test drought indicators have mostly focused on agricultural drought. Our review points to a current trend towards the design and use of composite indicators, but with limited evaluation of the links between indicators and drought impacts. Overall, we find that much progress has been made both in research and practice on drought indicators, but monitoring and early warning systems are not yet strongly linked with the assessment of wider impacts on the environment and society. To understand drought impacts fully requires a better framing of drought as a coupled dynamic between the environment and society

Drought forecasting isn’t just about water – to get smart we need health and financial data too

Forecasting drought should be about more than weather – to help those likely to be hit hardest, we need financial and even health data too