Journal article
Water availability in +2°C and +4°C worlds
- Abstract:
- While the parties to the UNFCCC agreed in the December 2009 Copenhagen Accord that a 2°C global warming over pre-industrial levels should be avoided, current commitments on greenhouse gas emissions reductions from these same parties will lead to a 50:50 chance of warming greater than 3.5°C. Here, we evaluate the differences in impacts and adaptation issues for water resources in worlds corresponding to the policy objective (+2°C) and possible reality (+4°C). We simulate the differences in impacts on surface run-off and water resource availability using a global hyrdological model driven by ensembles of climate models with global temperature increases of 2°C and 4°C. We combine these with UN-based population growth scenarios to explore the relative importance of population change and climate change for water availability. We find that the projected changes in global surface run-off from the ensemble show an increase in spatial coherence and magnitude for a +4°C world compared with an +2°C one. In a +2°C world, population growth in most large river basins tends to override climate change as a driver of water stress, while in a +4°C world, climate change becomes more dominant, even compensating for population effects where climate change increases run-off. However, in some basins where climate change has positive effects, the seasonality of surface run-off becomes increasingly amplified in a +4°C climate.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Version of record, bin, 900.4KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1098/rsta.2010.0293
Authors
- Publisher:
- Royal Society Publishing
- Journal:
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A More from this journal
- Volume:
- 369
- Issue:
- 1934
- Pages:
- 99-116
- Publication date:
- 2011-01-01
- Edition:
- Publisher's version
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1471-2962
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Subjects:
- UUID:
-
uuid:03059618-d01d-4e8d-a798-518a7b0438ba
- Local pid:
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ora:5151
- Deposit date:
-
2011-03-21
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- F Fung, A Lopez & M New
- Copyright date:
- 2011
- Notes:
- Citation: Fung, F., Lopez, A. & New, M. (2011). 'Water availability in +2°C and +4°C worlds', Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 369(1934), 99-116. [Available at http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/]. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
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