Drying and water depletion bring deepening crisis around the world

For more than twenty years, satellites have followed the total amount of water held in glaciers, ice sheets, lakes, rivers, soils and wide natural reservoirs of the world. A comprehensive global analysis of these data shows that fresh water is rapidly disappeared under most of the feet of humanity and that the large areas of the Earth are dry.

Scientists see enormous and expanding “mega drying” zones-one of them extends from Western America to Meksica to Central America, the other from Morocco to France, to the entire Middle East.

The organization has two main reasons: the increasing temperatures that occur using oil and gas and over -over to accumulate thousands of years underground.

“These findings are perhaps sending the most worrying message about the effect of climate change on our water resources, Hydrag said Hydolog and Professor Jay Famiglietti at the State University of Arizona. “The rapid water cycle change that the planet has experienced in the last decade has revealed a fast drying wave.”

Since 2002, satellites have measured changes in the field of gravity of the Earth to monitor shifts in both frozen and liquid water. What they send shows that approximately 6 billion people live in 101 countries that lost three-quarters of humanity.

Each year, these drying areas are roughly expanded by an area of ​​California.

Canada and Russia, where large amounts of ice and permafrost melted, are losing the sweetest water. The United States, Iran and India are also close to the summit with increasing temperatures and chronic excessive use of groundwater.

Farms and cities draw a lot of water using high -capacity pumps where most of the water evaporates, and ultimately fall over the ocean, while the sea level rises and increases by measurable.

In Visalia, the water flows from a well to irrigate a orchard.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

The study published in the journal Science progressHe found that these water losses contributed more to the rise of sea levels than to more widely understood by mountain glaciers or Antarctica or Greenland ice layers.

The surprising rapid expansion of the drying zones was surprising even for scientists. Famiglietti said that he would worse in many areas and led to “widespread aridification and desertification ..

Famiglietti said, ık We found an enormous growth in the land areas that have excessive drought, ”Famiglietti said. “Only tropics get wet. The rest of the land areas in the world is building the rest.”

The drying wave allowed many people in the world to pierce more wells and to pump more groundwater.

Researchers estimate that 68% of the water lost by the continents are due to the depletion of groundwater. And most of this water is to irrigate plants.

When the aquifer levels decrease, the wells and taps gradually spray and run dry, people descend deeper and underground areas may be black.

Loss may be irreversible, existing and leaves future generations with less water.

Famiglietti said that potential long -term results are terrible: Farmers will be threatened by a lot of food, economic growth, increasing number of people will escape from drying zones, conflicts on the water are already increasing and more government will be destroyed in countries that are not prepared.

Researchers estimate that the world’s drying zones have lost 368 billion metric tons of water a year. This is more than twice the volume of Lake Tahoe, or the 10 -fold mead, the largest reservoir of the United States.

Every year, every year, in the coming decades, the sea level, which is expected to cause deteriorating damages, has made a significant contribution to the rise.

Previous studies showed Decrease in groundwater levelsdry areas be dry And these water losses sea ​​level rise. However, the new study shows that these changes are faster and more on a larger scale than before.

“Quite worrying,” he said. “Water touches everything in life.

The global situation compared the savings accounts to an excessive spending and a family that attracted.

Chandanpurkar, “Our bank balance is constantly decreasing. This is naturally inevitable,” he said.

The authority hides how much dry regions of the unintentional groundwater, which is often invisible, draws reserve accounts. “After these trust funds have dried up, the water bankruptcy is close.”

The researchers examined the data from two US-German satellite tasks called gravity rescue and climate experiment (elegance). Grace-Follow.

Scientists listed the Central Valley of California as the region where the fastest groundwater exhaustion occurs, followed by some parts of Russia, India and Pakistan.

Inside Other researchScientists have found that the last 25 years were probably the most dry in Western North America in at least 1,200 years.

In the last decade, groundwater losses have accelerated in the Colorado River basin.

And ten years ago, in the satellite data, the agricultural areas, which emerged as hot drought and hot drought and groundwater exhaustion, such as the central valley of California and the high plains under the high plains, expanded to the southwest, Mexico and Central America.

Satellite data shows that these and other regions not only shift to dry conditions, but also show that the water they exist can “live in their vehicles”.

“The truth is that the water is not valued and it is exploited for short -term snow from long -term reserves,” he said.

He said he hoped that the findings will take action to address the chronic excessive use of water.

In the study, the researchers wrote that although the efforts to slow down climate change splashes ”, people should take steps to protect groundwater urgently. They called for national and global efforts to manage groundwater and to “assist to protect this valuable resource for future generations”.

Where in many areas Groundwater levels fallThere is no limit to good punctuation or how much a landowner can pump and there is no fee for water. Often, good owners do not even need to wear one meter or notify how much water they use.

In California, farms that produce a large amount of nuts, fruits and other crops pulled the aquifers so heavy that thousands of rural households have dried wells in the last decade. Sinking up to 1 feet a yearDamaged channels, bridges and levees.

In 2014, the state accepted a turning point groundwater law This requires local agencies to prevent widespread excessive pipes. However, until 2040, it gives many spaces to address exhaustion problems and in the meantime, water levels continued to decrease.

State officials and local agencies have started to invest in projects to capture more rainwater and renew the aquifers.

Arizona tried to protect groundwater in urban areas with the 1980 law, but in most of the state, there is still no limit to how many wells can be drilled or how much water can be pumped. In the last decade, non -governmental companies and investors deep wells and Extended large -scale agricultural operations To grow straw and other products in the desert.

Famiglietti, a senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet drive laboratory, examined extensively exhaustion of groundwater exhaustion worldwide. He said that most countries’ leaders were aware of the worsening crisis or that they were preparing for them.

Famiglietti said, “From all the disturbing findings we have created in the study, the only thing that humanity can really make a difference is the decision to better manage groundwater and to protect for future generations,” Famiglietti said. “Ground water will be the most important natural resource in the world’s drying areas. We need to protect carefully.”