A global water scarcity assessment under shared socio-economic pathways – Part 1: Water use
Abstract. A novel global water scarcity assessment for the 21st century is presented in a two-part paper. In this first paper, water use scenarios are presented for the latest global hydrological models. The scenarios are compatible with the socio-economic scenarios of the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs), which are a part of the latest set of scenarios on global change developed by the integrated assessment, IAV (climate change impact, adaptation, and vulnerability assessment), and climate modeling community. The SSPs depict five global situations based on substantially different socio-economic conditions during the 21st century. Water use scenarios were developed to reflect the key concepts underpinning each situation. Each scenario consists of five factors: irrigation area, crop intensity, irrigation efficiency, industrial water withdrawal, and municipal water withdrawal. The first three factors are used to estimate agricultural water withdrawal. All factors were developed using simple models based on a literature review and analysis of historical records. The factors are grid-based at a spatial resolution of 0.5° × 0.5° and cover the whole 21st century at 5-yr intervals. Each factor displays a wide variation among the different global situations depicted: the irrigation area in 2085 varies between 270 and 450 km2, industrial water between 246 and 1714 km3 yr−1, and domestic water withdrawal between 573 and 1280 km3 yr−1. The water use scenarios can be used for global water scarcity assessments by identifying the regions vulnerable to water scarcity and analyzing the timing and magnitude of scarcity conditions.