Water-cycle Changes Will Hit Half World’s Population
Published on by Ashantha Goonetilleke, Professor, Water/Environmental Engineering at Queensland University of Technology in Academic
It might be extreme rainfall, it might be floods, or it might be very dry weather, but by 2050 more than half of the world's population will be experiencing significant changes in the water cycle. A new study identifies which parts of the world will feel these changes most
All of us rely on water. We drink it, wash with it, make energy from it, irrigate our crops with it and sometimes even entertain ourselves with it – sailing, skiing and swimming. The locations of our towns, cities, fields, factories and holiday destinations are often strongly linked to the regional water cycle. But soon things are likely to change. Climate change is intensifying the water cycle, and for many of us the rain, sun and shine that we take for granted is not going to last.
Jan SedláÄek and Reto Knutti, both from the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, wanted to work out who would be affected most by these water-cycle changes. To do this, they synthesized the variations based on the latest climate model intercomparison (CMIP5), and noted the kind of changes that occurred and where they took place.
Writing in Environmental Research Letters (ERL), SedláÄek and Knutti say that with a warming of 2 °C – expected to be reached by 2050 if carbon emissions continue to rise – more than half of the world's population will experience robust changes in at least one aspect of the water cycle.
What’s more, the researchers showed that the bulk of people affected are concentrated in just a few “hotspots”, mostly in Asia – south-eastern China, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan – and Central Africa, around Nigeria, Benin, Ghana and Togo. They also identified weaker “hotspots” including the region between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Coast in North America, around the Netherlands, England and Belgium, and in Central America.
Source: Environmental Research
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