Climate change will affect global water availability through compounding changes in seasonal precipitation and evaporation

Goutam Konapala, Ashok K. Mishra, Yoshihide Wada, Michael E. Mann

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

603 Scopus citations

Abstract

Both seasonal and annual mean precipitation and evaporation influence patterns of water availability impacting society and ecosystems. Existing global climate studies rarely consider such patterns from non-parametric statistical standpoint. Here, we employ a non-parametric analysis framework to analyze seasonal hydroclimatic regimes by classifying global land regions into nine regimes using late 20th century precipitation means and seasonality. These regimes are used to assess implications for water availability due to concomitant changes in mean and seasonal precipitation and evaporation changes using CMIP5 model future climate projections. Out of 9 regimes, 4 show increased precipitation variation, while 5 show decreased evaporation variation coupled with increasing mean precipitation and evaporation. Increases in projected seasonal precipitation variation in already highly variable precipitation regimes gives rise to a pattern of “seasonally variable regimes becoming more variable”. Regimes with low seasonality in precipitation, instead, experience increased wet season precipitation.
Original languageEnglish (US)
JournalNature Communications
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2020
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
  • General Chemistry
  • General Physics and Astronomy

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