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Future changes in climate and socioeconomic systems will drive both the availability and use of water resources, leading to evolutions in scarcity. The contributions of both systems can be quantified individually to understand the impacts around the world, but also combined to explore how the coevolution of energy-water-land systems affects not only the driver behind water scarcity changes, but how human and climate systems interact in tandem to alter water scarcity. Here we investigate the relative contributions of climate and socioeconomic systems on water scarcity under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways-Representative Concentration Pathways framework. While human systems dominate changes in water scarcity independent of socioeconomic or climate future, the sign of these changes depend particularly on the socioeconomic scenario. Under specific socioeconomic futures, human-driven water scarcity reductions occur in up to 44% of the global land area by the end of the century.

Abstract After a century of semi‐restricted floodplain development, Southern Alberta, Canada, was struck by the devastating 2013 Flood. Aging infrastructure and limited property‐level floodproofing likely contributed to the $4–6 billion (CAD) losses. Following this catastrophe, Alberta has seen a revival in flood management, largely focused on structural protections. However, concurrent with the recent structural work was a 100,000+ increase in Calgary's population in the 5 years following the flood, leading to further densification of high‐hazard areas. This study implements the novel Stochastic Object‐based Flood damage Dynamic Assessment (SOFDA) model framework to quantify the progression of the direct‐damage flood risk in a mature urban neighborhood after the 2013 Flood. Five years of remote‐sensing data, property assessment records, and inundation simulations following the flood are used to construct the model. Results show that in these 5 years, vulnerability trends (like densification) have increased flood risk by 4%; however, recent structural mitigation projects have reduced overall flood risk by 47% for this case study. These results demonstrate that the flood management revival in Southern Alberta has largely been successful at reducing flood risk; however, the gains are under threat from continued development and densification absent additional floodproofing regulations.

Assessments of future virtual water trading are still lacking. Here the authors estimated the global virtual water trade throughout the century and found that virtual green water exports and virtual blue water exports at least triple to more than 3200 bcm and 170 bcm, respectively, by the end of the century.

As Canadian crude bitumen production from oil sands has increased in recent decades, the nation’s oil and gas industry has become a significant contributor to national greenhouse gas emissions. Canada has developed carbon emission reduction targets to meet its Nationally Determined Contributions and Mid-Century Strategy goals. A detailed profile of energy consumption pathways in the oil sands industry is necessary to identify potential areas of improvement and to monitor progress toward meeting emissions reduction targets. Much of the existing literature for oil sands modeling provides input assumptions with different technological boundaries. For a set of oil sands extraction and upgrading technologies, this study first reviews the literature and then quantifies energy input requirements, CO2 emissions, and operating costs for a set of consistent technological boundaries and energy units. Summary results refer to requirements and costs at the production facility, excluding transportation and blending costs. An energy system diagram of oil sands production that matches these boundaries is provided, which can be used by integrated assessment models, oil sands companies, and government ministries to evaluate the present and future energy consumption and emissions pathways of the oil sands industry.