Calculate climatic water balance – climate emergency Leipzig
Water balance and climate emergency in Leipzig
What is a water balance?
In Germany, the soils are drier than ever before.
In the summer of 2022, precipitation nationwide averaged less than half of normal. And there are no signs that the situation will improve soon.
The lack of rain is not the only reason why the situation in Germany is becoming increasingly critical. Evaporation also plays an important role. Water evaporating from the soil accounts for about 20% of the total water loss. But until now, evaporation has been largely ignored.
Water balance is the relationship between the amount of water stored, consumed, lost, and transported within a given space and time period.
Water balances can be used to determine whether there is enough water for human consumption and agriculture, and they provide information on the availability of water resources.
Water balance is the difference between the total amount of water entering a system and the total amount of water leaving the system.
In hydrology, the term refers to the amount of water stored on the land surface and in underground aquifers.
Water balances are often expressed as the sum of three components: precipitation, runoff, and groundwater recharge.
In climate science, the water balance is used to describe the global atmospheric circulation pattern, with positive values indicating the net accumulation of water vapor in the atmosphere and negative values indicating the loss of water vapor from the atmosphere.
What does the climate emergency in Leipzig have to do with it?
In the wake of climate change and the increased occurrence of droughts and heavy rainfall phenomena, Leipzig City Council declared a Leipzig Climate Emergency on October 30, 2019.
At that time, Leipzig committed to responsible, local action to combat climate change.
But despite massive efforts in recent years, Leipzig has not been able to sufficiently reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
That is why the city of Leipzig decided to launch an emergency climate action program in the summer of 2020.
Leipzig’s Lord Mayor Burkhard Jung: “We are taking a clear path toward climate neutrality and environmental protection. And we do that together.”
The city aims to reduce emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050.
Leipzig also aims to achieve energy savings of 50 percent by 2030 and increase the share of renewable energy to 30 percent.
Another goal is to make Leipzig one of the most environmentally friendly cities in Germany.
For this reason, 24 additional, specific measures were announced.
This includes expanding the public transport network, building a solar park, introducing electric vehicles to our fleet, reducing congestion and implementing climate protection measures at the local level.
Calculate climatic water balance
As a landscape architecture firm, we also support the path taken by the city of Leipzig.
The climatic water balance is a calculation to determine the amount of precipitation needed to recharge groundwater resources. The formula is based on the assumption that precipitation is evenly distributed throughout the year.
However, this is not the case, as some areas receive more rain than others during certain months of the year. This means that the actual amount of water available at any given time may differ from the climatic water balance estimate.
To calculate the climatic water balance, you need to know the average annual rainfall for your area, the total number of days in a year, and the depth of the aquifer. Then multiply these three numbers together to find out how many gallons of water the aquifer holds per day.
This information is important for calculating the amount of water needed to recharge the aquifer.
You need the calculation of a “climatic water balance” for the proof of the secured development, in the course of the building permit procedure?
Taking into account the climate emergency, we develop drainage concepts for you according to the principles of cascade management.
Based on a climate-adaptive and water-sensitive objective, the best possible approximation of a natural climatic water balance of the undeveloped condition is the primary goal of our drainage designs.
The guiding principle here is a near-natural relationship between direct runoff, groundwater recharge and evaporation rate.
Through
- Consideration of runoff-reducing surface pavements to reduce direct runoff,
- the design of primarily open structures for evaporation effects via greening
and - the planning of underground retention areas to promote groundwater recharge
we develop balanced drainage concepts taking into account the climatic water balance.
Do you need a climatic water balance calculation for your project?
Then get in touch with us!