Climate Change Is Drying Up Islands

A drone captured this view of Mili Atoll, in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Jeffrey P. Donnelly

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That romantic hike through a lush tropical island may be an experience for today’s couples instead of their kids or grandkids. Climate researchers say that small islands in the Caribbean, Pacific and Atlantic will be drying out as the world’s temperatures rise and rainfall patterns shift toward the middle and end of this century.

Some small islands will become wetter, but the majority -- 73 percent -- will become drier. That means less freshwater for local residents, agricultural products that sustain the islands’ economies, and vegetation and wildlife that depend on the island’s unique ecosystems.

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“It’s going to be harder to grow stuff because there’s not going to be enough water,” said Kristopher Karnauskas, assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

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“The small island doesn’t have a large catchment area,” he said. “Unless they are really well developed, they are relying on rainfall.”
Karnasuskas and colleagues at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and University of Arizona published their findings today in the journal Nature Climate Change. Their study is a projection of what might happen if current trends in global temperature and rainfall continue.
In the 2013 report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists used global climate models to predict shifts in rainfall and temperature over the world’s continents. But the land mass of many small islands is too small for these models to come up with an accurate prediction.

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Karnauskas substituted the known evaporation rates over land to fill in the blanks in in the climate equation for these islands, which have a total population of 18 million people.
“If you could magically transport your self into a climate model to where you ought to find an island in French Polynesia, there’s only open ocean,” he said. “We pretend that there is a land surface and use principles of how evaporation works and calculate aridity.”
By 2090, the calculations show that islands with a population of about 9 million people will become 20 percent dryer, while another 6 million will experience 40 to 60 percent less fresh water.