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Rivers and reservoirs around the world are drying up this summer as record droughts rage on. Lake Mead along the Colorado, the largest reservoir in the nation, hit record lows. And experts fear the dreaded deadpool – where the reservoir can no longer provide water or hydropower to downstream communities – may only be a couple years away. The Yangtze river in China, the world’s 3rd largest by volume, got so low that Sichuan province experienced rolling blackouts as hydropower had to be severely rationed. And the Danube that runs through eastern Europe is currently at half its usual levels for this time of year.

So what does all of this mean? In short, it means that, as global warming continues, we are going to continue seeing record droughts and many places are, simply, going to have to live with far less water. But, more specifically, it means we are going to need to innovate both how cities and agriculture do business. In this episode of Weathered we discuss how the vast majority of water is actually used in agriculture and how the greatest gains in water use efficiency will have to come from irrigation.

Weathered is a show hosted by weather expert Maiya May and produced by Balance Media that helps explain the most common natural disasters, what causes them, how they’re changing, and what we can do to prepare.

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