Large Area of Northern Hemisphere to Suffer Water Shortage Due To Shrinking

Research has linked civil conflict in the region and in other parts of the world with climate change.

A new study reveals how winter snowpack rates has been on the decline in the northern hemisphere where this could lead to an alarming water shortage, affecting 2 billion people who need snowmelt for their water supply. They said that shrinking snowpacks could result in increasing water shortages in large swathes of northern hemisphere.

All of these face at least a 67% risk of a decline in stored snow, given the demand for water now.

According to the researchers, the areas that fall under the list of being most sensitive to the changes include basins in northern and central California, the Ebro-Duero basin in Portugal, Spain and southern France. But global warming is upsetting this convenient balance. Studies are showing that winter precipitation is falling as rain, not snow in many parts of the world, and washing away, while snow that does fall is settling at higher elevations, yet melting earlier.

Lead author Justin Mankin, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Earth Institute based jointly at the institute’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that the steps should to taken to prepare for the world without these resources.

Snow on large mountain chains is an important natural reservoir.

He clarified that the consequences of reduced water are not the same for all places.

“Managers need to be prepared for the possibility of multi-decadal decreases in snow water supply”.

The findings of the study appeared in the most recent edition of the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Climate change and the predicted rise in global temperatures are important factors in predicting how much our water supplies will dwindle but they are not the only ones.

Using new climate models, American and European researchers looked at a total of 421 drainage basins across northern hemisphere.

A new study indicates that if California thinks it has it bad now, it hasn’t seen anything yet..

Also on the list is the volatile Shatt al Arab basin, which channels meltwater from the Zagros Mountains to Iraq, Syria, eastern Turkey, northern Saudi Arabia and eastern Iran.

And accelerated melting of the glaciers could actually increase water supplies for a few central Asian nations, including Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. “Both of those outcomes are entirely consistent with a world with global warming”.

Climate change “also shifts an additional 68 basins to have spring and summer rainfall runoff that is insufficient to meet human water demand, even without accounting for increases in demand that are likely to arise from population growth and economic development”, the report states. However, people’s consumptive habits could change and bring more uncertainty, scientists warn.

“People have a lot of bureau in this image of water availability moving forward”, says Mankin.