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How each incremental change in climate will have an increasingly devastating effect on the world's water

Apr 21, 2015, 21:29 IST

One of the biggest threats posed by climate change is the availability of water for people around the world.

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Bank of America Merrill Lynch recently put out a giant report on the future of agriculture and water us. Among the takeaways: water scarcity, and the resulting agricultural constraints, is the biggest global problem of the 21st century.

From the report, this graphic shows how warming global temperatures - which at this point are a foregone conclusion even if the planet was to stop emitting CO2 tomorrow - will affect the global water supply, degree by degree.

BAML points out that the water crisis is number one in terms of impact in the World Economic Forum's annual report on global risks. This is not a small problem. It's not a regional drought. It's a secular trend that is eventually going to affect almost everyone on the planet: what we eat, how we eat, who has enough to eat, and even how our food tastes.

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This map, showing the impact on crop yields from a three degree Celsius rise in temperature, puts the above into perspective.

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