Terrestrial water storage under changing climate and implications on future droughts
- 1Michigan State University, Civil and Environmental Engineering, East Lansing, United States of America (ypokhrel@egr.msu.edu)
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
Terrestrial water storage (TWS) strongly modulates the hydrological cycle, and is a key determinant of water resource availability, and an indicator of drought. While historical TWS variations have been extensively studied, the impacts of future climate change on TWS and the linkages to droughts remain unexamined. In this study, we quantify the impacts of climate change on TWS using an ensemble of hydrological simulations and examine the implications on droughts using the TWS drought severity index. Results indicate that climate change is projected to reduce TWS in two-third of global land area; TWS declines are especially severe in the southern hemisphere, leading to clear north-south contrast. Strong agreement across 27 ensemble simulations suggests high confidence in these projections. The declines in TWS translate to substantial increase in the occurrence and frequency of drought by mid- and late-21st century. By the late-21st century global land area and population in extreme-to-exceptional TWS drought could more than double, each increasing from 3% during 1976-2005 to 7% and 8%, respectively. Our findings underscore the need for stringent climate adaptation measures to avoid adverse effects on water resources due to declining TWS and increased droughts.
Yadu Pokhrel1, Farshid Felfelani1, Yusuke Satoh2, Julien Boulange2, Peter Burek3, Anne Gädeke4, Dieter Gerten4,5, Simon N. Gosling6, Manolis Grillakis7, Lukas Gudmundsson8, Naota Hanasaki2, Hyungjun Kim9, Aristeidis Koutroulis7, Junguo Liu10, Lamprini Papadimitriou11, Jacob Schewe4, Hannes Müller Schmied12,13, Tobias Stacke14, Camelia-Eliza Telteu12, Wim Thiery15,8, Ted Veldkamp16,17, Fang Zhao18,4 and Yoshihide Wada3,17 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA 2National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Japan 3International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria 4Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Member of the Leibniz Association, Potsdam, Germany 5Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany 6School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK 7School of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece 8Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland 9Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan 10School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China 11Cranfield Water Science Institute (CWSI), Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK 12Institute of Physical Geography, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany 13Senckenberg Leibniz Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre Frankfurt (SBiK-F), Frankfurt am Main, Germany 14Institute of Coastal Research, Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht (HZG), Geesthacht, Germany 15Department of Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium 16Department of Water & Climate Risk, VU University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 17Department of Physical Geography, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands 18Department of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
How to cite: Pokhrel, Y. and the Co-authors: Terrestrial water storage under changing climate and implications on future droughts, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-738, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-738, 2021.
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