Abstract
Water scarcity (WS) is projected to increase as a result of future climate and population changes, and its impacts will be hazardous to vulnerable groups of people in South Asia (SA). We present the first assessment of WS in SA under the Paris Agreement, using two global hydrological models (GHM) forced by three global climate models (GCM) under the RCP 6.0. Results show that a significant alteration in the hydrological fluxes contributes to the decline in water availability, along with an intense increase in water consumption that augments WS. The seasonal shifting in WS significantly increases the population affected by approximately 16% in June to September (JJAS) to 42% in December to February (DJF) under 1.5 ºC warming. We also highlight spatial hotspots of WS in SA, including North-central, Northwestern, and Southern India, Eastern Pakistan, Northern, and Northwestern Bangladesh. We observe a 1.5 ºC temperature increase as a critical point for WS in SA with a profound impact on 875 million people and suggest the Paris Agreement temperature target of even 1.5 ºC will not ubiquitously alleviate future warming-driven WS. Hence, immediate mitigations and legislations are required to curtail WS in SA.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Research Square |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 11 Feb 2022 |
| Externally published | Yes |
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