Study: Global Models of Climate Change Impacts Underestimate the Effect on Local Water Availability

Smart Water Magazine has written an article on a study conducted by researchers led by the Vienna University of Technology – Wien which suggests that current stream flow models, or models of global atmospheric circulation, underestimate the impact of climate change on water availability. The group compared over 9,500 sources of local water data with estimates from global models and found that those models are overreporting how much water rivers will contain as climate change intensifies. Overall, “the connection between precipitation and the amount of water in the rivers is much more sensitive than was previously thought,” creating the potential for current water supply challenges in North America, Africa, and Australia to reach crisis levels sooner than expected. Read more at Smart Water Magazine.