Water Scarcity Likely to Increase in the Coming Decades

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By Katherine Kornei, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: ...accessing clean water is an issue for a significant swath of the population, and the situation is only apt to worsen in coming decades, new modeling work reveals. About 55% of the world’s population currently has trouble accessing clean water at least 1 month out of the year, and by 2100, that number could rise above 65%, researchers calculated. Minimizing water scarcity now and into the future will rely on curbing water use, reducing pollution, and mitigating the effects of climate change, the researchers suggest. ...Edward Jones, a hydrology and water quality modeler at Utrecht University in the Netherlands ...Researchers were surprised to find that the worst-case scenario they considered—RCP 8.5 and SSP 5—didn’t result in the largest number of people being exposed to clean water scarcity. The researchers attributed that finding to the increased economic development and heightened water use efficiency built into that particular SSP. The scenario defined by RCP 7.0 and SSP 3 yielded the largest population experiencing clean water scarcity, the team reported in Nature Climate Change. ...There’s a trifecta of challenges to tackle, and each is nothing short of a major undertaking: limiting climate change, reducing water use, and minimizing pollution in the environment. “These three aspects are really key,” Jones said.... 

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