Significance of socioeconomic data distribution in global water scarcity assessment
Abstract
Socioeconomic development and climate change burdened global freshwater resources and increased water scarcity. Numerous research has assessed the global water scarcity at catchment, country, and continental scales and helped develop mitigation and adaptation policies. It has been conducted at a grid-scale from the early 21st century due to modeling capability and data development advancements. However, the assessment was restricted considering physical water scarcity assuming it to be primarily affected by supply (availability) and demand (use) of physical water. Water scarcity can be affected by the economic condition affecting water management supported by infrastructure and technology (e.g., dam construction, desalination, virtual water imports, i.e., hidden flows of water in food or other commodities).
We have performed the global water scarcity assessment considering both physical and economic water scarcity at the grid scale for the beginning and end of the 21st century. The assessment captures future extremities by considering multiple SSP-RCP scenarios representing a world of sustainability (SSP1-RCP2.6), regional rivalry (SSP3-RCP7.0), and fossil fuel development (SSP5-RCP8.5), multiple GCMs, and two gridded population datasets indicating urban concentrated and dispersed population. It shows that the future water-scarce population lies between 0.32-665 million. The uncertainty in the future assessment is 6.58-489 million and 0.03-248 million due to the socioeconomic-climate (SSPs-RCPs) path taken by the society and global climate models, respectively. The uncertainty due to the gridded distribution of population data has a similar impact with 169.1-338 million. The considerable uncertainty due to population distribution highlights the importance of the subregional distribution of socioeconomic factors for predicting the future global environment. Published article related to this work: Modi, P., Hanasaki, N., Yamazaki, D. et al. Sensitivity of subregional distribution of socioeconomic conditions to the global assessment of water scarcity. Commun Earth Environ 3, 144 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00475-w- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2022
- Bibcode:
- 2022AGUFM.H35F..02M