Food exports can drain arid regions

Global warming may be responsible for the Northern Hemisphere's recent bout of severe winters. As Arctic sea ice melts, it funnels cold air toward the equator and sets the stage for snow, a new study finds.

“When we have a dramatic reduction in sea ice, we end up with more snow,” says climate scientist Jiping Liu of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Understanding the big blue picture of water resources means getting over the notion that water is wet. Ninety-two percent of water used planetwide goes into growing crops, according to the latest accounting from Arjen Hoekstra and his water research group at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. So for 1996 through 2005, Hoekstra and colleagues tracked “virtual water,” a combination of actual liquid and the shares of water used in industry and in growing wheat, beef and other products.
This accounting highlights the various degrees to which nations depend on foreign water. Some arid countries take a whopping portion of their virtual water from outside their borders (Israel, 82 percent, Kuwait, 90 percent), but so do relatively watery places such as the United Kingdom (75 percent) and the Netherlands (95 percent), the researchers report online February 13 in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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