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Title: Balancing global water availability and use at basin scale in an integrated assessment model

Journal Article · · Climatic Change
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  1. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
  2. Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton, AB (Canada)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Water is essential for the world’s food supply, for energy production, including bioenergy and hydroelectric power, and for power system cooling. Water is already scarce in many regions of the world and could present a critical constraint as society attempts simultaneously to mitigate climate forcing and adapt to climate change, and to provide for a larger and more prosperous human population. Numerous studies have pointed to growing pressures on the world’s scarce fresh water resources from population and economic growth, and climate change. This study goes further. We use the Global Change Assessment Model to analyze interactions between population, economic growth, energy, land, and water resources simultaneously in a dynamically evolving system where competing claims on water resources from all claimants—energy, land, and economy—are reconciled with water resource availability—from renewable water, non-renewable groundwater and desalinated water sources —across 14 geopolitical regions, 151 agriculture-ecological zones, and 235 major river basins. We find that previous estimates of global water withdrawal projections are overestimated. Model simulations show that it is more economical in some basins to alter agricultural and energy activities rather than utilize non-renewable groundwater or desalinated water. Lastly, this study highlights the importance of accounting for water as a binding factor in agriculture, energy and land use decisions in integrated assessment models and implications for global responses to water scarcity, particularly in the trade of agricultural commodities and land-use decisions.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
1249378
Journal Information:
Climatic Change, Vol. 136, Issue 2; ISSN 0165-0009
Publisher:
SpringerCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 60 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (17)

Balancing clean water-climate change mitigation trade-offs journal January 2019
A seawater desalination scheme for global hydrological models journal January 2016
A Global Hydrologic Framework to Accelerate Scientific Discovery journal January 2019
A Global Analysis of Future Water Deficit Based On Different Allocation Mechanisms journal August 2018
A seawater desalination scheme for global hydrological models posted_content March 2016
A hydrological emulator for global applications – HE v1.0.0 journal January 2018
Balancing clean water-climate change mitigation trade-offs text January 2019
Implication of Paris Agreement in the context of long-term climate mitigation goals journal September 2016
Regional responses to future, demand-driven water scarcity journal August 2018
Integrated Solutions for the Water-Energy-Land Nexus: Are Global Models Rising to the Challenge? journal October 2019
Xanthos – A Global Hydrologic Model journal September 2017
GCAM v5.1: representing the linkages between energy, water, land, climate, and economic systems journal January 2019
Toward a consistent modeling framework to assess multi-sectoral climate impacts journal February 2018
A Continental‐Scale Hydroeconomic Model for Integrating Water‐Energy‐Land Nexus Solutions journal October 2018
Water balance variability in the confined Aba’ala limestone graben at the western margin of the Danakil depression, northern Ethiopia journal April 2018
Developing food, water and energy nexus workflows journal June 2019
Humans drive future water scarcity changes across all Shared Socioeconomic Pathways journal January 2020

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58 GEOSCIENCES
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