For millennia the Nile supplied Egypt with more water than needed. As the population grew and the economy expanded, demand on water increased accordingly. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis to reconstruct how total demand on water outstripped supply of the Nile water in the late 1970s, starting from a surplus of about 20 km3 per year in the 1960s leading to a deficit of about 40 km3 per year by the late 2010s. The gap is satisfied by import of virtual water. The role of economic growth in driving per capita demand on water is quantified based on detailed analysis of water use by agriculture and other sectors. We develop and test an empirical model of water demand in Egypt that relates demand on water to growth rates in the economy and population. Looking forward, we project that within this decade of the 2020 s, under nominal scenarios of population and economic growth, Egypt is likely to import more virtual water than the water supplied by the Nile, bringing into question the historical characterization of Egypt as “the gift of the Nile”.

Agricultural development is among the most significant forms of land-use change globally. In central North America it has consisted of cropland expansion in the early 1900s, yield intensification starting in the 1930s, and the development of large irrigated areas beginning in the 1950s. The area of this study encompasses the Midwest and Great Plains of the United States not only because significant agricultural change has occurred here but also because of the significant cooling (warming hole) there in the midcentury. This study investigates the relative contribution of agricultural development and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on the observed patterns of regional changes in summer temperature, precipitation, and evapotranspiration using a long-term twentieth-century reanalysis dataset (CERA-20C) as boundary conditions for simulations with the MIT Regional Climate Model (MRCM). Temperatures in the Great Plains (33°–43°N, 95°–109°W) and the Midwest (38°–48°N, 82°–109°W) would have been significantly higher in the second half of the twentieth century without the influence of agricultural development, largely due to an increase in evaporative cooling. The simulations of precipitation changes reflect a significant influence of global SST teleconnections at decadal time scales. Numerical simulations also demonstrate the competing effects of cropland expansion and yield intensification on shaping the observed pattern of increases in precipitation. Ultimately, a combination of agricultural development and decadal variability of global sea surface temperatures (SST) explains most of the observed variability of summer temperature and precipitation during the twentieth century over central North America.

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