Ben See Profile picture
Aug 18, 2019 9 tweets 4 min read Read on X
The world’s largest sources of freshwater will be severely depleted by 2029, with catastrophic consequences for all of humanity.

[THREAD]
Timebomb:

Regions most sensitive to changes in climate include humid and wet areas, such as the Amazon, Indonesia and parts of central Africa. In some of these areas, it could take *less* than 10 years for climate change to fully impact groundwater flows.
carbonbrief.org/climate-change…
Groundwater response times:

The map below:

Yellow shows areas where groundwater is likely to fully respond to stresses in under 10 years. ⚠️

Light green shows where the response time is 10-100 years.

Dark green & blue: 100 to over 10,000 years.

Also👇
Areas with the shortest groundwater response times include wet, humid regions: the Amazon, the Congo Basin, Indonesia, and low-lying regions, such as the Asian mega-deltas and the Florida Everglades.

2 billion living with absolute water scarcity by 2025👇
Finite:

The water that supplies aquifers and wells for billions of people is mostly a non-renewable resource that could run out in many places.

Just 6% of the groundwater around the world is replenished and renewed within a "human lifetime" of 50 years.cbc.ca/news/technolog…
Today, nearly three and a half billion people struggle with severe water scarcity for 3 months of the year.

The #EcologicalEmergency is right now, and has been going on for decades. Time for meaningful international solidarity - that means system change.

Most over-stressed is the Arabian Aquifer System, which supplies water to 60 million people in Saudi Arabia & Yemen; the Indus Basin aquifer in northwest India & Pakistan is the second-most threatened; the Murzuk-Djado Basin in northern Africa the third. nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/07/w…
Today:

🔺1.9 billion people live in countries facing extremely high water stress

e.g India, Pakistan, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE

🔺Another 2.5 billion people face high levels of water stress
The likelihood of conflict:

'most regions of the world face significant hydropolitical vulnerabilities that, in a number of hot-spot basins, may turn into serious water conflict in the decades to come'

The rapid pace of climate breakdown is a key threat.link.springer.com/chapter/10.100…

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More from @ClimateBen

Aug 27
COLLAPSE/EXTINCTION: scientists fear global warming of 3.5°C, which wipes out 33-70% of species (IPCC AR4 2007, IPCC AR6 2022), will likely hit by the 2060s give or take a decade or two 🧵
1. IPCC scenario SSP3-7.0 shows 3.5°C by 2080 or from 2062 (not the worst-case scenario). Even a moderate emissions scenario can lead to 3.5°C this century (new research shows 2060s-80s possible).


Species extinct IPCC:
3.5C 40-70% 2007
3C 29%, 4C 39% 2022esd.copernicus.org/articles/12/25…
2. A new pre-print from highly respected climate scientists implies 3.5°C by 2065-77 at current rates of warming. The authors warn this rate could increase or decrease perhaps suggesting 3.5°C by around 2055-2087 rather like IPCC high emissions scenarios.
researchsquare.com/article/rs-607…
Read 5 tweets
Aug 25
BREAKING: scientists say Earth's major systems are undergoing abrupt changes — and soon we'll all feel them 🧵
1. 'prepare for a future of abrupt change.. choices made now will determine whether we face a future of worsening impacts and irreversible change or one of managed resilience to the changes already locked in.' phys.org/news/2025-08-s…
2. Society must now brace for catastrophic impacts.

Thread:
Read 7 tweets
Aug 9
Destruction of habitats and wildlife has intensified and accelerated to an almost unimaginable degree during the capitalist era. Scientists say the 40-50% of plant species now facing extinction will be obliterated in a handful of decades. It didn't have to be like this. Rethink. Plants are going extinct up to 350 times faster than the historical norm
1. Capitalism: a 'meteorite'

'previous mass extinctions.. took 10,000s, 100,000s, even millions of years to happen. this is happening so fast, now in just two, three decades..'
google.com/amp/s/www.cbsn…

Recovery: "we most likely won’t be there to see it"..
discovermagazine.com/earth-is-on-th…
2. Current estimates of plant extinctions are, without a doubt, gross underestimates. Extinctions will surpass background rates by 1000s of times over the next 80 years. universityofcalifornia.edu/news/plants-ar…
Read 8 tweets
Aug 7
BREAKING: as tropical forests show increasingly clear signs they are entering a collapse phase scientists warn irreversible mass extinction conditions are on the horizon 🧵
1. rapid warming & collapse

".. warming could continue to accelerate.. even if we reach zero human emissions. We will have fundamentally changed the carbon cycle in a way that can take geological timescales to recover, which has happened in Earth’s past.”scitechdaily.com/mass-extinctio…
2. “There will be a point in the not too distant future when we suddenly see and feel this mass extinction all around us very clearly”

“A key point of extinction crises is that life has always recovered.. However..we most likely won’t be there to see it."
Read 5 tweets
Jul 23
icymi: our coastal cities will be smashed by multi-metre sea level rise within decades Peak global mean temperature, atmospheric CO2, maximum global mean sea level (GMSL), and source(s) of meltwater.  Light blue shading indicates uncertainty of GMSL maximum. Red pie charts over Greenland and Antarctica denote fraction (not location) of ice retreat.
The Greenland ice sheet is now losing around 9 billion litres of ice an hour [Geological Survey of Denmark &Greenland]

With the ice sheet at “a tipping point of irreversible melting”, scientists currently expect an unavoidable sea level rise of 1-2 metres.weforum.org/stories/2025/0…
4 to 10 m sea level rise committed in the coming 2000 years, with the majoroty of that in the coming decades/centuries it would appear.
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

x.com/climate_ice/st…
Read 4 tweets
Jul 21
BREAKING: horrific worst-case scenarios firmly back on the table as scientists confirm large-scale Earth systems such as forests, ice sheets, and ocean currents may already be collapsing 🧵
'large-scale Earth systems may be experiencing gradual collapses that are easy to miss, with profound implications

"we may already be crossing tipping points without realizing"

Slow changes can be deceptive

some systems may slide into collapse silently'
phys.org/news/2025-07-e…
Read 5 tweets

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