External publications

Water in a heated world

Drewes, Jörg E. / Alexander Bassen / Markus Fischer / Anna-Katharina Hornidge et al.
External Publications (2025)

in: ACS ES&T Water 5 (3), 1071-1074

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsestwater.5c00088
Open access

The impacts of climate change, population growth, and overexploitation of water resources are becoming increasingly evident worldwide in the loss of ecosystem services, changes to precipitation patterns, prolonged droughts with record heat waves, glacier mass loss, degraded water quality with increasing water-related health risks, declining groundwater recharge rates, and altered runoff regimes in surface waters. (1) The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) in its new flagship report entitled “Water in a heated world” comes to the conclusion that the frequency, magnitude, and duration of extreme events are increasing with impacts more frequently beyond the spectrum of human experience, escalating into “regional water emergencies”. (2) These threats are by no means limited to certain water-stressed regions but can be observed more widely representing a pattern with a planetary dimension, resulting in increasing loss of life and limb, increasing long-term adverse effects on human health (e.g., heat stress and psychological impairment), affecting large ecosystems and their biodiversity, and resulting in major economic losses. For these new and drastically accelerated changes, the WBGU speaks of these changes as threatening situations in which the limits of controllability are exceeded, social structures and ecosystems are substantially destabilized, and the scope for action no longer exists.

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