The long dry: global water supplies are shrinking

Source: https://phys.org December 13, 2018 by Wilson Da Silva, University of New South Wales

A global study has found a paradox: our water supplies are shrinking at the same time as climate change is generating more intense rain. And the culprit is the drying of soils, say researchers, pointing to a world where drought-like conditions will become the new normal, especially in regions that are already dry.

The study – the most exhaustive global analysis of rainfall and rivers – was conducted by a team led by Professor Ashish Sharma at Australia’s UNSW (University of New South Wales) in Sydney. It relied on actual data from 43,000 rainfall stations and 5300 river monitoring sites in 160 countries, instead of basing its findings on model simulations of a future climate, which can be uncertain and at times questionable.