Safe clean drinking water

VIDEO - Water
VIDEO - Water 2
VIDEO - Water scarcity

Approximately a billion people live without clean drinking water. Imagine if your taps went dry. What would we do? Would you walk to your park to get dirty water for your family as millions of mothers in Africa do every day. More than a six-hour journey to get water each day. The lack of clear and clean water, causes disease. And thousands live their days without the bare necessities. Weakened bodies sadden the heart, one billion people do without. It tears the whole world apart. We call this the water crisis. It's a crisis because every living being needs safe clean drinking water.

Because the accessibility to water affects everything in our life. As human beings need dirt-free and unpolluted drinking water.

Factors affecting density of population

Population density is the number of people per square kilometer or mile.

This may be calculated for a county, city, country, another territory, or the entire world.

Lightning

Lightning has fascinated humans for a long time.

A thunderstorm, also known as a lightning storm, is a form of weather characterized by the presence of lightning and its sound effect on the Earth's atmosphere known as thunder.

The clouds at the high levels of the thunderstorm are made of ice crystals. The formation of ice in a cloud is an important element in the development of lightning. Positively charged ice crystals rise to the top of the thunderstorm and negatively charged ice particles and hailstones drop to the middle and lower parts of the storm.

If the negatively charged area at the bottom of the storm gets large enough, sends out a channel toward the ground called a step leader. It is invisible to the human eye and moves in steps toward the ground. When the step leader nears the ground, it repels all the negatively charged in the surrounding area, and attracts all the positive charge. As the positive charges collect in high enough concentration, they send out small bolts of ground to air lightning called streamers. If the streamers can make contact with the step leader, an electric current wave propagates up the channel as lightning.

The Netherlands - a low-lying country

The Netherlands is a geographically low-lying country.

About 27% of The Netherlands and 21% of its population located below sea level, and 50% of its land lying less than one metre above sea level.

The Gulf Stream

The world's oceans move constantly. Ocean currents flow in complex patterns and are affected by the wind, the water's salinity and temperature, the shape of the ocean floor, and the earth's rotation.

The Gulf Stream is one of the strongest ocean currents in the world. The Gulf Stream is a warm, Atlantic ocean current that originates at the tip of Florida, and follows the eastern coastlines of the United States and Newfoundland before crossing the Atlantic Ocean. At about 40°N 30°W, it splits in two, with the northern stream crossing to northern Europe (the North Atlantic Drift) and the southern stream recirculating off West Africa. The Gulf Stream influences the climate of the east coast of North America and the west coast of Europe.

The Gulf Stream brings warmth to the west coast of Europe and is the reason we have mild winters. Without this steady stream of warmth the British Isles winters are estimated to be more than 5°C  cooler, bringing the average December temperature in London to about 2°C.

Köppen - climate classification system

Wladimir Köppen (1846-1940), was a Russian-born German climatologist who developed a systematic method of classifying the climates of the world based on long-term patterns of the distribution of temperature and precipitation around 1900. His classification remains the most used climate classification system up to the present day.

Köppen – climate classification system			examples
Tropical climates	Af	Tropical rainforest climate	Belém, Brazil
	Aw	Tropical wet and dry / savanna climate	Lagos, Nigeria
Dry (arid and semi-arid) climates	BS	Steppe climate	Denver, Colorado, United States
	BW	Desert climate	Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Temperate climates	Cs	Mediterranean climate, dry season in the summer	Barcelona, Spain
	Cw	Temperate maritime climate, dry season in the winter	Zhengzhou, China
	Cf	Temperate maritime climate, no dry season	Roermond, The Netherlands
Continental climates	Df	Continental climate, no dry season	Chicago, Illinois, United States
	Dw	Continental climate, dry in the winter	Vladivostok, Russia
Polar climates	ET	Tundra climate	Vardø, Norway
	EF	Ice Cap climate	Antarctica
	EH	Highland climate	The Himalayas

Köppen – climate classification system - world map

Irrigation for agriculture

The next maps shows the world's most populated areas depend on irrigation for agriculture.

VIDEO - Irrigation for agriculture

Agriculture and irrigation have affected the rise and fall of many great civilizations. Without agriculture, our way of living would cease to exist as it does today. Without irrigation, we would not have agriculture.

Agriculture

Agriculture is the farming of crops. It provides most of the world's food supply and helps support the economy.

Irrigation

Irrigation is the act of moving water from one place to another and is used in farming to water crops.