Abstract: Water scarcity is rapidly increasing in many regions. In a novel, multi-model assessment, we examine how human interventions (HI: land use and land cover change, man-made reservoirs and human water use) affected monthly river water availability and water scarcity over the period 1971 – 2010. Here we show that HI drastically change the critical dimensions of water scarcity, aggravating water scarcity for 8.8%(7.4 – 16.5 %) ) of the global population but alleviating it for another 8.3 % (6.4 -1…