The Stream, December 17: India Faces Severe Warming by 2100

India’s climate outlook in the upcoming century is bleak, according to an analysis of eighteen different climate models reported in The Hindu. Average annual surface temperatures are expected to rise by 4-7 degrees Celsius, part of a warmer world with heat waves severe drought, and major floods, according to a World Bank-sponsored report.

Read the latest dispatch here from the front lines of India’s water-food-energy nexus by Circle of Blue’s Keith Schneider.

Climate change and burgeoning urbanization and middle-class lifestyles will create dangerous water scarcity and crop shortages in China by 2030. Cereal production, Fortune reports, will be challenged by water scarcity from fast-melting Himalayan glaciers, soil depletion, and land pressure from urbanization.

U.S. Drought’s Ripple Effects
In Kansas, more than 2,000 farmers owe a water debt they will likely struggle to repay. The farmers had accepted an emergency water allocation after this summer’s historic drought, and will have to reduce water use by the same amount in the future, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported. However, future dry years could make water-debt repayments especially difficult.

Officials in Texas are still searching for relief from last summer’s drought, and conflict looms. The Lower Colorado River Authority is considering channeling water from Texas’ Highland Lakes to relieve Lower Colorado rice farmers, StateImpact reports, but two Texas legislators threatened consequences for such an action.