A Systematic Review of Methods for Investigating Climate Change Impacts on Water-Energy-Food Nexus

Water, energy and food are important for human survival and sustainable development. With climate change, investigating climate change impacts on Water-Energy-Food nexus has been a topic of growing interest in recent years. However, there is a lack of a systematic review of the current state and methodologies of Water-Energy-Food nexus studies under climate change. Here, we review research articles investigating climate change impacts on Water-Food, Water-Energy and Water-Energy-Food nexus over last seven years. The existing methods and tools, spatial scales, and future climate scenarios setting in these articles are summarised and analysed. We found that the analyses methods could be divided into four categories (physics-based modelling, statistical methods, supervised learning and operation optimisation), among them, physics-based modelling accounts for the largest proportion. The reviewed studies cover a range of scales from site scale to global, with most studies focusing on the regional scale. Models used for small to middle scale are mainly related to hydrology and water resource, while large-scale modelling is based on interdisciplinary models. Future climate scenarios setting include emission scenarios and global warming scenarios based on Global Climate Models (GCMs). A number of future research challenges have been identified. These include spatial scale and resolution, internal physical mechanism, application of novel artificial intelligence models, extreme climate events, potential competition in nexus systems as well as data and model uncertainty.

Automated summary

Water, energy and food are essential for human survival and sustainable development. With the impact of climate change, the study of climate change's effects on the Water-Energy-Food nexus has become a growing area of interest. This review examines research articles from the past seven years that investigate the impacts of climate change on the Water-Food, Water-Energy, and Water-Energy-Food nexus. The methods, tools, spatial scales, and future climate scenarios used in these studies are summarized and analyzed. The review finds that physics-based modeling is the most commonly used method, and the studies cover scales ranging from site to global. Future research challenges include spatial scale and resolution, internal physical mechanisms, novel artificial intelligence models, extreme climate events, competition within nexus systems, and data and model uncertainties.