The Rappbode Reservoir in the Harz region is Germany’s largest drinking water reservoir, supplying around one million people with drinking water in areas including the Halle region and the southern part of the state of Saxony-Anhalt. Water temperatures in the reservoir now have the potential to increase significantly due to climate change. If average global warming reaches between 4 and 6 degrees by the year 2100, as the current trend suggests, temperature conditions in the Rappbode Reservoir will become comparable to those in Lake Garda and other lakes south of the Alps. In an article in Science of the Total Environment magazine, a team of researchers led by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) writes that the reservoir’s operators could partially offset the impacts this will have on the drinking water supply—to do so, they would have to change the way the reservoir is managed.
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Source: Phys.org