Mexico City is on the brink of a water catastrophe. Experts predict that the city of 8.8 million people could run out of drinking water this month.
But Mexico City is not the first city with a water crisis and it won't be the last. As global temperatures rise, it disrupts the atmosphere's natural circulation of water on Earth — what's called the hydrological cycle.
"With every degree of global warming, the hydrological cycle will also intensify leading to more water crises," Aditi Mukherji, director of the Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Impact Action Platform of the CGIAR, told Business Insider.
But Mukherji said the biggest factor that makes a city vulnerable isn't climate change, it's water management.
"It's not so much about the absolute quantity of the water per se, but it's about how the available water is distributed," she said, adding that "water scarcity at the end of the day boils down to issues of policies and governance."
Here are 11 other cities at high risk of running out of water. Many are located in the 25 most water-stressed countries worldwide, according to the World Resources Institute.
"Even a short-term drought puts these places in danger of running out of water and sometimes prompts governments to shut off the taps," Liz Saccoccia, a water scarcity associate with WRI, told Business Insider via email.