Dr. Susan (Shufen) Pan, an assistant research professor in Auburn University’s International Center for Climate and Global Change Research found that more than half of the global land area could experience water scarcity by the end of 21st century. By the end of 21st century, climate warming would result in large increase of surface evapotranspiration, a measure of the amount of water lost from the land surface.
The research also found that the ratio of evapotranspiration to precipitation would greatly increase across the global land area. In particular, regions like Africa would face the largest increase in evapotranspriation where atleast 44% of the population does not currently have access to clean, reliable water supplies.
The paper was published and Earth’s Future, Journal of Geophysical Research and featured in facebook and googleplus.