Science Alert reports:

All over the world, fresh water is disappearing, and a new analysis reveals that much of it is entering the ocean, with drying continents now contributing more to the alarming rise in global sea levels than melting ice sheets.

The research team, led by Earth system scientist Hrishikesh Chandanpurkar from FLAME University in India, says that urgent action is required to prepare for much drier times ahead, thanks to climate change and human groundwater depletion.

Using more than two decades of satellite observations from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and its follow-on mission, the researchers created a picture of how terrestrial water storage has changed since 2002, and why.

“We find that the continents (all land excluding Greenland and Antarctica) have undergone unprecedented rates of drying and that the continental areas experiencing drying are increasing by about twice the size of the state of California each year,” the authors write.

Humans have majorly disrupted Earth’s water cycle by emitting greenhouse gases that change our atmosphere, and diverting waterways and rainfall catchments. Although ‘wet’ areas have been getting wetter, and ‘dry’ areas have been getting drier, these shifts aren’t keeping step.

“Dry areas are drying at a faster rate than wet areas are wetting,” the team writes. “At the same time, the area experiencing drying has increased, while the area experiencing wetting has decreased.” [Continue reading…]