Global warming is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of severe water scarcity (SWS) events, which negatively affect rain-fed crops such as wheat, a key source of calories and protein for humans. Here, we develop a method to simultaneously quantify SWS over the world's entire wheat-growing area and calculate the probabilities of multiple/sequential SWS events for baseline and future climates. Our projections show that, without climate change mitigation (representative concentration pathway 8.5), up to 60% of the current wheat-growing area will face simultaneous SWS events by the end of this century, compared to 15% today. Climate change stabilization in line with the Paris Agreement would substantially reduce the negative effects, but they would still double between 2041 and 2070 compared to current conditions. Future assessments of production shocks in food security should explicitly include the risk of severe, prolonged, and near-simultaneous droughts across key world wheat-producing areas.

CEIGRAM Universidad Politécnica de Madrid ETSIAAB 28040 Madrid Spain

Centre of Biodiversity and Sustainable Land Use University of Göttingen Büsgenweg 1 37077 Göttingen Germany

Department of Agroecology Aarhus University Blichers Allé 20 8830 Tjele Denmark

Department of Geography Faculty of Science Masaryk University Kotlářská 2 613 00 Brno Czech Republic

Department of Geography University of Cambridge Downing Place CB2 3EN UK

Department of Geosciences University of Arkansas Fayetteville AR USA

Global Change Research Institute CAS Bělidla 986 4b Brno 603 00 Czech Republic

iCLIMATE Interdisciplinary Centre for Climate Change Aarhus University Frederiksborgvej 399 4000 Roskilde Denmark

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Schlossplatz 1 A 2361 Laxenburg Austria

Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems College of Earth and Environmental Sciences Lanzhou University Lanzhou 730000 China

Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research Eberswalder Str 84 15374 Müncheberg Germany

Mendel University in Brno Institute of Agrosystems and Bioclimatology Zemědělská 1 Brno 613 00 Czech Republic

Plant Sciences Department Rothamsted Research Harpenden Hertfordshire AL5 2JQ UK

Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL Zürcherstrasse 111 8903 Birmensdorf Switzerland

Tropical Plant Production and Agricultural Systems Modelling University of Göttingen Grisebachstraße 6 37077 Göttingen Germany

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