Climate change is likely to intensify the alarming rate of degradation of the world’s rivers and wetlands unless water resources are better managed, according to a special issue of the international scientific journal Marine & Freshwater Research published online today.

Rain – Falling drops of water. The image was made from four big photos and downsized for better quality.

Rainfall runoff and water availability will be increasingly affected in the next four decades, with the tropics probably getting wetter and dry regions becoming drier, say leading water researchers in the issue, which is devoted to problems caused by water resource development and to providing solutions for improved management in an era of climate change.

Climate modelling is also predicting increases in the extremes of floods and droughts. As well, increasing temperatures are causing rivers around the world to change their flow patterns, particularly where they rely on snow melting.

Rivers and wetlands are already degrading more than any other ecosystem – with growing impacts on global biodiversity and on human communities that depend on river flows, says UNSW’s Professor Richard Kingsford, Director of the Australian Wetlands and Rivers Centre, who edited the special issue. “The world is watching how Australia manages the over-allocation of rivers caused by dam-building and increasing effects of climate change,” says Professor Kingsford. Read more

Residents in the Canadian town of Onoway, Alberta got quite a shock on Monday night when their drinking water suddenly turned bright pink. And we’re not talking just any old pink – that colour is outrageous.

Town officials have been forced to apologise to the locals, putting the neon nightmare down to a valve malfunction during some routine maintenance. Turns out, the pinkest chemical you’ve ever seen removes impurities from wastewater, and somehow it made its way into the Onoway reservoir.

“The Town of Onoway sincerely apologises for any alarm this may have caused. We assure you our water is safe and Public Works is doing everything they can to abate the situation as quickly as possible,” the local council said in a press statement. Read more

Does hot water freeze faster than cold water? It seems obvious that the answer should be no, because all things being equal, hot water takes longer to cool down than cold water, and so it couldn’t possible freeze faster.

But observations over thousands of years, as well as countless modern experiments, have shown that the opposite is true – under carefully controlled conditions, hot water at times seems to freeze faster than cold water.

How is this possible? Well, that’s something that still has scientists baffled – in fact, they’re still struggling to prove the effect exists in the first place, as the first episode of Derek Muller’s new science channel, Sciencium, explains.

It turns out that freezing water is a lot more complicated than you might think. Read more

All living creatures are dependent on water to live. When it comes to humans, our brains and hearts are composed of around 70 percent water, while our lungs contain a whopping 80 percent – even our bones are about 30 percent water. To survive, we need close to 2.4 litres daily on average, some of which we get from food. 

But what happens if you’re allergic to water? That’s the case for a rare few, who have a condition called aquagenic urticaria. American teen, Alexandra Allen, was diagnosed with aquagenic urticaria in 2013 – her allergy to water means she has to limit her cleaning rituals to 5-minute cold showers twice a week, cut her hair short and became a vegetarian in order for her body to produce less oil.

“I’m told that someday, my throat might swell when I drink water, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned since getting this, it’s that we all have things to deal with in life,” she told People magazine in April. People with the condition restrict their eating of certain fruits and vegetables with high water content, and often opt for drinking diet soft-drinks instead of tea, coffee, or juice. Read more