by Suzanne York
December 25, 2013

from EcoWatch Website

A new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that climate change is likely to put 40 percent more people worldwide at risk of absolute water scarcity, due to changes in rainfall and evaporation.

Unsurprisingly, the study noted that,

“Expected future population changes will, in many countries as well as globally, increase the pressure on available water resources.”

With a mid-range United Nations projection of 9.6 billion people by 2050, how countries around the world manage water resources is becoming more critical with each passing day.

And a changing climate is likely to play havoc with even the best laid plans.

Today, between one and two people out of 100 live in countries with absolute water scarcity (defined as less than 500 cubic meters of water available per year and per person).

On average, each person consumes about 1,200 cubic meters of water each year, and even more in industrialized countries. Yet the impacts of continued population growth and increasing climate changes could bring the ratio of people living in countries with absolute water scarcity up to about 10 in 100 people.

The Mediterranean, Middle East, southern U.S. and southern China could experience “a pronounced decrease of available water;” southern India, western China and parts of eastern Africa could have an increase.

The authors of the study found that,

“This dwindling per-capita water availability is likely to pose major challenges for societies to adapt their water use and management.”

Just last month, the World Resources Institute (WRI) released the results from its Aqueduct water project in which it found that 37 countries face “extremely high” levels of baseline water stress.

This means that more than 80 percent of the water available to agricultural, domestic and industrial users is withdrawn annually - leaving businesses, farms and communities vulnerable to scarcity.

According to WRI :

…the world’s water systems face formidable threats. More than a billion people currently live in water-scarce regions, and as many as 3.5 billion could experience water scarcity by 2025.

Increasing pollution degrades freshwater and coastal aquatic ecosystems. And climate change is poised to shift precipitation patterns and speed glacial melt, altering water supplies and intensifying floods and drought.

Greater "conservation" and more efficient water systems (especially for industrial agriculture) will help.

Also incorporating traditional and indigenous methods of water storage and usage that is applicable to each community and/or region will be needed. But what is most needed is global action on climate change to 'reduce global greenhouse emissions' and thereby put the world on a path toward a more sustainable future.

There is too much at stake, and water is too precious of a resource to not implement policies to help countries, communities and families adapt to the coming changes.

-   Recognizing the Elephant in the Room   -

Future Climate Impacts across Sectors
December 16, 2013

from Pik-Potsdam Website

A pioneering collaboration within the international scientific community has provided comprehensive projections of climate change effects, ranging from water scarcity to risks to crop yields.

This interdisciplinary effort, employing extensive model inter-comparisons, allows research gaps to be identified, whilst producing the most robust possible findings. The results provide crucial insights for decision-making regarding mitigation efforts in the face of potential impact cascades.

The analyses are to be published in a special feature of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that assembles the first results of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP), which aims at bringing research on climate impacts onto a new level.
 

“There is an elephant in the room: current and future climate change impacts.

 

But strangely, many people seem to be blind to it,” says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the special feature’s introduction as well as several of its papers.

 

“Many decision makers prefer to turn a blind eye to global warming consequences, while many scientists tend to focus on very specific aspects of climate change. So we resemble the fabled blind men, who unknowingly touch different parts of the same elephant: grasping the animal’s trunk, one of the men is convinced he has a snake in his hand, whilst one other mistakes the tail for a rope.

 

To recognize the animal, they must talk to each other to properly identify the individual parts and to bring them together. This is exactly what this international project does.”

More than 30 research teams from 12 countries involved

More than 30 research teams from 12 countries systematically compared state-of-the-art computer simulations of climate change impacts on a broad range of sectors.

The project builds on previous inter-comparison exercises from the fields of agriculture, hydrology, and ecosystems sciences.

Results are combined to identify, for example, regional hotspots of climate change,

• the Amazon

• the Mediterranean

• East Africa,

...where several impact types coincide and potentially interact.

Moreover, comparing models helps to understand the differences between them. For example, projections of impacts on food prices are affected by different assumptions about the intensification of land management or changes in international trade.

Elucidating the various influences of these measures could help to identify options for effective real-world policies.

“The results clearly indicate that the impacts on nature and society would increase sharply with each degree of global warming,” says Katja Frieler from the ISI MIP coordination team.

The findings of the ISI-MIP are amongst the scientific publications that feed into the IPCC’s report on climate change impacts to be presented in March 2014.
 

Public data archive to enhance the quality of impact models

One of the core products of ISI-MIP is a public data archive, where the output as well as the input data from the project is available for further research and to promote maximum transparency.

A specific aim is to further enhance the quality of the computer models of impacts.

After the publication of its first results, the project now enters a second phase, broadening the scope of impacts considered (addressing, for example, the energy industry and global fisheries) and incorporating models that look more closely at specific regions.

“The climate change impacts picture remains far from complete, in particular with regard to socio-economic consequences,” says Pavel Kabat, director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, co-author of several contributions to the special feature, and co-editor.

 

“The human costs of climate change are often triggered by the biophysical impacts, but are not identical to the impacts themselves. For example, water shortages in some regions might contribute to human conflicts and drive large-scale migration. We already have enough certainty today about climate change impacts to recognize it is high time to act.

 

But as scientists we will work hard to further integrate and strengthen the existing expertise to better see the elephant in the room - and just how dangerous the mighty beast really is.”

PUBLICATION: Schellnhuber, H.J., Frieler, K., Kabat, P. (2013): The Elephant, the Blind, and the Intersectoral Intercomparison of Climate Impacts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (early online edition) [DOI:10.1073/pnas.1321791111]