Societal impacts of historical droughts in a warming world
Résumé
Global climate change has highlighted social and economic challenges associated with water deficits, particularly in regions where demands on freshwater exceed renewable supplies. In view of ongoing global warming, climate models project increased aridity in the twenty-first century over most of Africa, parts of the Americas, Australia, and Southeast Asia, as well as the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Severe recent droughts in human-dominated environments-as experienced in California, Brazil, China, Spain, and Australia-can no longer be seen as purely natural hazards. These droughts have had devastating ecological and economic consequences and are expected to cause more damage by the end of the twenty-first century (Savelli et al. 2022). Moreover, such heat waves are projected to become more intense, more frequent, and longer lasting in a warmer climate (Cook et al. 2018). Drought research has a long history in both the natural and social sciences. Climatologists and hydrologists have made significant progress in understanding the physical processes that underlie droughts. At the same time, historians, economists, geographers, and sociologists have studied societal impacts and perceptions of droughts.