Overview
- Researchers project that extreme tap‑off droughts could first emerge in about 35% of drought‑prone regions within the next 15 years, with hotspots in the Mediterranean, southern Africa, and parts of North America.
- Under a high‑emissions pathway, roughly 750 million people could be threatened by such conditions by 2100, including about 470 million urban residents and 290 million in rural areas.
- The study finds urban exposure is especially high in the Mediterranean, where about 196 million city dwellers could be at risk, while rural impacts concentrate in northern and southern Africa and parts of Asia.
- Analysts attribute the rising risk to human‑driven warming compounded by growing water demand and mismanagement, with some regions facing shorter recovery times between events and potential reservoir failures.
- The authors stress that results are projections rather than precise predictions, note that groundwater buffering was excluded, and urge faster clean‑energy mitigation and improved water management to reduce risk.