"There's no surprise that in the future when it gets hotter and there's more demand for water, people are going to be using more water," said Jonathan Winter, an associate professor of geography at Dartmouth College and an author onWinter and his team used a computer model to look at how heat and drought might affect crop production by the middle and end of this century, given multiple scenarios for the emissions of warming greenhouse gases.
While scientists are confident in the warming effects of greenhouse gas emissions, precipitation is harder to nail down, especially in the Midwest, said Dave Gochis, a senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research who was not involved with Winter’s study. In the Southeast, where they focused their work and where water resources are plentiful, “it’s more of a proactive strategy” for people who already have irrigation equipment, Arumugam said, “so that we don’t overexploit the resources that are in place.”