Hydrological Intensification Will Increase the Complexity of Water Resource Management

Global warming intensifies the hydrological cycle by altering rate of water fluxes to and from terrestrial surface, resulting in an increase extreme precipitation events longer dry spells. Prior intensification work has largely focused on without joint consideration evaporative demand changes how plants respond these changes. Informed state-of-the-art climate models, we examine projected its role complicating resources management using a framework that accounts for surplus demand. Using metric combines difference between daily (surplus events) consecutive days when exceeds (deficit time), show that, globally, will become larger (+11.5% +18.5% moderate high emission scenarios, respectively) duration them (+5.1%; +9.6%) end century, with largest northern latitudes. The intra-annual occurrence extremes stress existing infrastructure major river basins, where over one third years during 2070–2100 under emissions scenario be hydrologically intense (large increases intensity deficit tripling historical baseline. Larger are found basins large reservoir capacity (e.g., Amazon, Congo, Danube River Basins), which have significant populations, irrigate considerable farmland, support threatened endangered aquatic species. Incorporating flexibility into resource paramount continued intensification.