According to new research, the number of people who will suffer as a result of extreme droughts is expected to increase to more than 2 times its current levels in the latter half of this century.

This new information comes from research performed by a global network of scientists begin led by a team at Michigan State University. More than 20 helped to author the results.

Currently about 3 percent of the world population is greatly impacted by severe drought. Much more than just a lack of clean water, the drought conditions lead to food shortages for those in the areas.

The new research predicts that this number will increase to around 8 percent by the late 21^st century. The results were recently published in Nature Climate Change.

“More and more people will suffer from extreme droughts if a medium-to-high level of global warming continues and water management is maintained in its present state,” said Yadu Pokhrel – civil and environmental engineer and lead author of the research paper.

“Areas of the Southern Hemisphere, where water scarcity is already a problem, will be disproportionately affected. We predict this increase in water scarcity will affect food security and escalate human migration and conflict.”

Additionally, the scientists are projecting that two-thirds of the planet will see a large reduction in natural land water storage. This includes the water which normally accumulates in snow and ice, rivers, lakes and reservoirs, wetlands, soil and groundwater. All of which is being driven by climate change.

This land water storage, represents critically important components of the world’s water and energy supply. “Our findings are a concern,” Pokhrel said.

“To date, no study has examined how climate change would impact land water storage globally. Our study presents the first comprehensive picture of how global warming and socioeconomic changes will affect land water storage and what that will mean for droughts through the end of the century.”

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To help better understand trends and the potential for the impact on water supplies, forest fires and the global ecosystem as a whole, University of California at Irvine are using new techniques to model and analyze factors related to snow droughts across the planet.

Changes in global weather patterns often affect drought conditions in parts of the world by creating conditions that lead to stronger or weaker than usual rainfall or tropical storms. This is often reported in terms of an El-Nino or La-Nina systems by weather reporters.

These systems, and the rain amounts of rain they bring have an almost immediate effect for potential drought conditions in a region.

Snow drought, however, can be harder to gauge. This is because the effect of variations in snowfall many not be immediately seen until the snowpack which builds up in high elevations starts to run low.

It is not at all uncommon to have snowfall build up in layers and remain virtually un-melted for years with consecutive years of abundant snowfall. Each spring and summer, some of the ice melts and fills rivers and streams, but much of it remains.

Because of this, the impact of a reduced amount of snowfall in a season or two may not be immediately seen. It is when the snowpack starts to run low, in addition to a below average season, that the impact on areas downstream become most apparent.

This is the challenge for scientists when trying to make predictions about impending drought conditions. It is here that the new modeling by researchers come into play.  

“Snow is an important global water resource that plays a vital role in natural processes, agriculture, hydropower and the basic socioeconomic conditions of various regions,” said lead author Laurie Huning. “While other forms of drought are well-studied, variations in snow droughts on a global scale have been examined to a far lesser extent until now.”

Armed with new methods, based on a new snow water equivalent index, the researchers looked at data in mountain ranges across the globe going back to more than 40 years.

For the western states of the U.S., the analysis pointed to an increase in snow droughts of twenty-eight percent during the most recent half of that time period.

The study indicates prolonged snow droughts in western state of the U.S. including California, Oregon, Washington. While not as severe, they also saw a similar issue for parts of Eastern Russia and Europe.

Other regions of the world appeared to fair better with a decrease in average snow drought severity. This includes areas surrounding the mountainous regions of Asia and South America.

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