Irrigation-induced land water depletion aggravated by climate change

Irrigation-induced land water depletion aggravated by climate change | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article Irrigation-induced land water depletion aggravated by climate change Yi Yao, Wim Thiery, Agnès Ducharne, Benjamin Cook, Anxin Ding, and 21 more This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-6170876/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Published Journal Publication published 05 Nov, 2025 Read the published version in Nature Water → Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Agricultural irrigation withdraws water from multiple resources, possibly causing water scarcity issues. Previous studies predominantly relied on observations or land-only simulations, and therefore generally ignored land-atmosphere interactions, or failed to separate the effects of irrigation from other forcings. Here we analyse the effects of historical irrigation expansion on water fluxes and resources using seven Earth system models. Results show that irrigation expansion substantially increases local evapotranspiration and this extra water out-flux is not compensated by changes in local precipitation. Rapidly expanding irrigation therefore reduces the net water influx from the atmosphere to land (-0.61, -0.21, -0.06, -0.16 mmyr -2 in South Asia, the Mediterranean, Central North America, and West Central Asia, respectively). Moreover, other forcings, like climate change, also contribute to the decrease in some regions, further aggravating local water loss. Consequently, regional terrestrial water storage depletion is pronounced in most irrigation hot-spot regions (~500 mm from 1901 to 2014 over South Asia and Central North America, and 100-200 mm in the Mediterranean and Central North America). Our results attribute the land water loss to irrigation expansion and climate change, calling for immediate solutions to tackle the negative trends. Earth and environmental sciences/Hydrology Earth and environmental sciences/Climate sciences/Climate change/Climate and Earth system modelling Earth and environmental sciences/Environmental sciences/Environmental impact Full Text Additional Declarations There is NO Competing Interest. Supplementary Files SupplementaryInformation.pdf Supplementary Information-Irrigation-induced land water depletion aggravated by climate change Cite Share Download PDF Status: Published Journal Publication published 05 Nov, 2025 Read the published version in Nature Water → Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-6170876","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":430691843,"identity":"cacc06b6-2a81-4ed7-aacd-78184c459dec","order_by":0,"name":"Yi 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