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Human Water Use Accounts For 42% of Recent Sea Level Rise
scibri writes "During the latter half of the twentieth century, global sea level rose by about 1.8 millimeters per year. The combined contribution from heating of the oceans, which makes the water expand, along with melting of ice caps and glaciers, is estimated to be 1.1 millimeters per year, which left some 0.7 millimeters per year unaccounted for. It seems that the effects of human water use on land could fill that gap. Researchers report in Nature Geoscience that land-based water storage could account for 0.77 millimeters per year, or 42%, of the observed sea-level rise between 1961 and 2003. The extraction of groundwater for irrigation and home and industrial use, with subsequent run-off to rivers and eventually to the oceans, represents the bulk of the contribution. It would be even worse if we weren't also locking up lots of water from rivers behind dams like the Hoover Dam."
It would be even worse if we weren't also locking up lots of water from rivers behind dams like the Hoover Dam
Even worse? Like a couple more millimeters! Evacuate NYC!
"It would be even worse if we weren't also locking up lots of water from rivers behind dams like the Hoover Dam." - Isn't the rate at which it leaves the lake the same as if the dam hadn't been there (with maybe the exception of evaporation...), just with a delay? My understanding was that dams affect latency but not throughput...
The sea levels have been rising since the last ice age, and for much of that time much faster than now. The volume of the ocean changes for many reasons. Those lands that are essentially at sea level are doomed anyway, no point in the sob stories of displaced natives as their land would be covered even without any alleged actions by man, if not now then in next few centuries. Better they move now before their population grows even bigger and more people are affected.
Imagine how much Facebook contributes to sea level changes.
I had always thought it was bad to prevent water from returning to the sea, as in:
-damming it up
-sucking it out of rivers before the river reaches the sea
It seemed to me that that would be upsetting ecological balances.
But now this seems to contradict that.
Actually, now that I think about it, it makes sense. The water from underground aquifers shouldn't to the ocean. It should go back into the ground.
This is one of those weird anti-environmental = environmental things (like some people who believe in AGW also now believe in nuclear as a solution).
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
So we just need more dams to fix this right, time to put those beavers to work!
That remark regarding influence of the (Hover) dam is rather uninformed: the water mass trapped behind dams world wide is negligible. Obviously, I leave the math as an exercise for the reader.
the 'Anthropocene', we have changed the surface of the earth so much.
This is obviously just another cry of "the sky is falling" from a bunch of alarmists pushing their anti-freedom agenda.
There's no credible evidence that this so-called "ground water" exists at all. Look down at your feet: The ground is made out of dirt. How do they supposedly turn all this dirt into water? Answer: They can't. Dirt is black, water is clear. You don't get one from the other. It's just common sense, people.
There's nothing to see here. Move along.
So how long can we use surface water at this rate before we run out?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Idea if you took a huge amount a water out of the ground and say that acted like coolent for the earth would it not over time when you take a lot heat up the earth thus expand the rate at which the poles melt as well?
The relevant part in this shocking news is "0.77 millimeters per year", not "42% of recent sea level rise". How on earth does one measure 0.77 mm per year? When I watch the waves breaking against the sea shore this seems so far fetched.
I was thinking that this might be mathematically silly as even though .77 millimeters per year isn't much the surface area of the ocean in VAST (131.6 million miles). But a quick calculation on Wolfram Alpha shows it'd only take 69,300,000 gallons of water or less than enough water to fill a supertanker. That sounds reasonable to me.
Umm, by continuity, the water is still flowing through the dam. If dams fully stopped the flow of water, the water would eventually overflow. We dam it to extract work from the water level height.
Sea level rise,
A 5-o'clock shadow surprise.
For grooming and the wise,
We continue to despise.
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I think that it's not the regular water use that's the problem, but the *misuse* - mainly manual underground water extraction...
Normally, water that has come to the ocean will eventually return to the ground in the form of rain, rivers will be full, etc...
Manually extracted water could not be returned that easily to the source. I'm not aware of the way that rivers are formed, or if/how they refill but this doesn't seem to be the problem in this case.
And, uhm, yes. The ocean level is rising since I remember. Deal with it.
Can someone explain to me how we can possibly measure the level of the World's oceans to within a tenth of a millimeter?
Frankly, when I consider the effects of temperature, wind, tides, currents... I find it hard to believe that we can come within a decimeter or two of accuracy.
One tenth of a millimeter?
Could someone explain this part to me:
"It would be even worse if we weren't also locking up lots of water from rivers behind dams like the Hoover Dam."
I get that destroying dams would cause greater fluctuations in water flow rates downstream. Over the long term, however, how would destroying dams cause a net increase in annual water flow rates? Are we actually letting out less aggregate water than comes in, causing dam lakes to actually grow larger each year and dooming them to inevitably flood over the dams creating them? I thought dams merely regulated water flow after building up a large reservoir to spin the turbines for electricity generation.
Ok, smartasses: the Hoover dam contains 37 cubic kilometer of water. The oceans 1.3 BILLION. This argument is ridiculous.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Nature Geoscience must be hard up for cash, its editorial staff are all on vacation, or a combination of both. I would think that a simple review of all known damns holding capacities versus the loss of ice would end this comedy by a once respected periodical. As a minor note to those, like me, that are the unwashed, the early 1980's was the last time earth had normal weather conditions. Good times, good times indeed.
...by this comment at the end of the summary?
It would be even worse if we weren't also locking up lots of water from rivers behind dams like the Hoover Dam.
I don't see why this matters much. If you released all of the dammed water, you'd have a one-time increase in ocean levels. So what? Dams control rivers, sure, but those rivers are still flowing and have been this entire time. Surely the throughput from that river over a relatively short period of time is far more significant than any amount of water dammed along that river.
To me, that statement is as silly as, "We'd have even more cars on the road if we weren't locking some of them up at red lights and intersections."
How is this news for nerds? Hell, there is probably a good percent of the slash dot crowd that doesn't even bathe regularly... Really, the alarm over AGW is really not tech related unless any of the following: Its a _real_ crisis (just one little drowning?), 2. something that can be done, 3. or it is actually interesting in a nerdy kind of way...
If this were a real concern, beachfront property prices would be falling. Islands would be littered with For Sale signs. 1 mm over many decades doesn't mean squat..
We should scoop up millions of gallons of seawater and blast it into space. Water on the moon, indeed!
Photos from orbit will show earth looking more and more like a prune with all that sucking of water, oil & gas from below even as the surging tides flow in to fill the wrinkles that appear. The earth will turn in on itself and shrink like a raisin with the remaining ice caps to look like a tasty sugar frosting. The end will come when a giant spoon scoops up the planet and it is crushed by immense teeth and devoured in a potent mix of saliva and digestive juices. Or maybe I'm letting my imagination carry the concept too far...
...omphaloskepsis often...
There are other causes besides just melting ice caps and expanding water and man made activities. For instance, the Great Lakes in the US are rising. As they rise, the more and more water runs out of them and eventually finds its way to the sea. There are other large bodies of water with similar geological forces in play that have nothing to do with man's activity.
It seems like places like Venice were worried about rising water levels long before 20th century man started irrigated cropland and the like. I am not a climatologist or anything like that but it seems like an awfully simple model that only looks at melting ice, warming water and the rest is because of people.
It's our fault, we are usign too much water and upsetting the balance.
Bad humans! Be gone!
Riiiiiight...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Damn it people, how often do I have to tell you!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Hogwash. Ground water is replenished from rain, snow, run off, etc. etc. All this hullabaloo about warming, oceans rising, blah blah blah is all naturally occurring. It's cyclical. Get over it. I grew up in a time when the environmental lobby was claiming that we were going to cause an ice age. It's all a bunch of bullshit. Humans are really bad however, at managing water resources for our own use.
I'll tell you what though - humans are making the environment more toxic. Now that's something to be actually concerned about and to put resources behind to clean up.
It would be even worse if we weren't also locking up lots of water from rivers behind dams like the Hoover Dam.
How would that be? Dams don't make the water go away. Over time, the amount of water going into the reservoir equals the amount leaving, or else the water levels would either drop or overflow the dam. The only significant change I'd see is that dams increase the surface area of the water and would therefore raise evaporation, so some of the water that would normally go downstream would turn into atmospheric moisture instead. For global warming purposes, that's probably not a good thing. But would it actually have a non-negligible effect on ocean levels?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It's called Post-Glacial Rebound, the land was pushed down by the glaciers, it's still rising now that the ice is gone. And since water runs down hill the Great Lakes (among others) are draining.
I'm pretty sure he was saying that it always continues warming from one ice age until we hit the next. Whether we melt all the ice a hundred years sooner is unimportant in both the short and long term. In the medium term you have a bunch of people pissing and moaning because they got stuck with the changing real estate rather than their great-grandkids.
The ice is going to melt. We are going to have another ice age. There's not a damned thing anyone can do about it and it's probably not going to happen in my lifetime, so why should I give a fuck?
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
To be honest, its science like this that does harm to global climate change initiatives.
I can't see humans drinking and then pissing changes ocean levels. Yah, I am exaggerating, but that is what we are saying. The same water that had got there anyway got routed and used, how does that explain sea level rise!
I live in Maine, and the land mass here has been slowly rising. I guess I'll be safe, even if sea level rises.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html
But hey, we all know that "there is 100% consensus among the serious scientists on AGW", right?
-Styopa
someone forgot to complain about how evil concrete is and the world is going to end. all that water not being absorbed into the ground beneath parking lots and concrete jungles is going into the ocean, and all the fishies are going to drown!!! its amazing, now the we bother to record all of these changes in the ecosystem we are finding out the earth changes, and change is bad...
But sea level rise due to global temperature should be offset by the associated decrease in the number of pirates. As this number declines, the associated hull displacement contributing to sea level rise decreases, bringing the system back towards stability.
It never fails to amaze me how little we understand the systems that we are attempting to regulate. Possibly with serious unforeseen consequences.
Now you kids stay off my lawn! I'm doing my part to reduce sea level by watering it.
Have gnu, will travel.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomed!
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You pathetic tunnel-visionaries.....
With all the earthquakes that happen undersea every year, the is some major ocean fllor remodeling going on. Of course the zero sum model that they are pushing also must mean that the ocean volume change because of tectonic shift is also zero sum.
A few thousand square mles of ocean floor raising a couple inches will have more of effect to sea level increases than all man made activity over the last ten thousand years.
I'm suprised that they haven't blamed hunting beavers in the 1700's for an increase in sea level changes because all the beaver dams that would have been built would have prevented ONE TRILLION (pinky to upper lip) gallons of water from entering the sea.
Actually, I know that 1 of the great lakes (forget the one) is lower and the amount is approximately the amount taken out of it for freshwater use (farming is always a big water user.) I heard about the studies back when the Great Lake states were discussing a deal where they would forbid any other state from stealing water from the Lakes - which sounded a bit nuts to people up here but people in AZ just assume someday they'll get water from the Great Lakes like we were just next door. I followed the hardly covered issue back then because having been in AZ, I know it was not crazy to the people wanting to make the deal. Thankfully our politicians opposed it (no lobby or media coverage) but when the time comes they'll easily change positions and undo past law if properly bribed.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
If only there were some way for water in the oceans to be reclaimed - perhaps we could find some way to take water from the oceans, form them into big "clouds" and then have some sort of propuslion system (wind currents?) push them over dry patches of land and somehow have that water somehow drop from the sky onto the ground...
Oh wait, this might take care of it.
Ken
BS
I can't wait to see how they work Anthropogenic Global Draining into the overall eschatology...
Liberty in your lifetime
I have been reading up on dihydrogen monoxide (water) and it's dangers (dhmo.org) and, after reading this article, I say DHMO is not worth the trouble and we should just ban it.
is a real problem. Sure, eventually those aquifers will fill up again, but we'll be dead before that happens, and in the meantime how do we irrigate the crops that depend on wells for water?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Water use anywhere is sustainable within the recharge and filtration parameters of the aquifer/surface supply. And the cost to bring the water to US drinking water standards. Trouble has been that water rights laws are traditionally written in scientific ignorance, and politics will trump science for the time being, usually to the detriment of real individuals in favor of the most recent sub-category. If you want an entertaining read on the subject, try 'Centennial' by Jamess A. Michener. Skip the dinosaurs, and the murder mystery, and go to the aquifer part. But global warming has consequences for water beyond sea level rise. Now that the Great Lakes don't freeze over each winter, evaporation continues all year. Malaria is coming back to the Ukraine now that the swamps don't freeze and kill of the mosquito population. The Brits are making wine. No worries there, though, cause none will make it offshore, both as a consequence of local demand and external standards. The overwhelming preponderance of humanities' unsustainable global activities are a result of concentrated waste injection (feed lots, chicken & pig farms, sewerage outfalls, and everyone pees upstream of NO), or water use/diversion (as in the movie Chinatown). The circulation of water is like blood in an animal. It can take a certain level of bleeding, cuts & scrapes, or pathogenic attack, and survive. But what we're doing in both willful ignorance and greed (privatization of water supplies in South America) is accelerating the detriment that global warming represents to inland fresh water supplies, and will sicken and kill the beast. Hell, women have anti-freeze and flame retardent in their breast milk because our water filtration / treatment systems aren't meant to keep that stuff out. So, look for water wars next, and for your water bill to start looking like your cellphone charges, and for businesses to crop up to make water re-use (toilets) more common. The earth makes a great natural filter, unless poisoned with heavy metals. Or mining runoff. Look to the coal industry for a huge contribution to lowering water quality, both as a function of runoff, and of drastic geological changes that cap or divert natural surface flows. Look for the poisoning of entire ecosystems by fracking. They (Warren Buffet, et. al.) were smart, and got grandfathered in before the burning tapwater, and surface hydrocarbon venting started. It takes 1 PPM of any petroleum component to make water undrinkable, and it's a bitch to remove the lighter molecules either by filtration, RO, or catalytic settling. So, don't pour your crankcase oil down the storm sewer, recycle it. Don't water your lawn, let it die off in favor of locally hardy species. Stop treating for minor pests, and go organic for gardens, with natural remedies for pests. Jacques Cousteau said that the earth, if scaled to the size of an egg, would be different from a stone only by the addition of a single drop of water, and a speck of dust. Love him, or sick-to-death of his preaching (while using some pretty energy intense equipment) he understood how complicated and complex the water issue is. A few hundred nodes on a Cray would be a good start for local basin study, and something bigger for the global picture. It's as complicated as atmospheric weather, but while interconnected, is much more difficult to quantify. It's mostly underground, and you can't rubber ducky it as easily. And, God Almighty, stop Monsanto and their brethren, who developmpatented GMO corn, etc, so their Roundup will not affect the plant. But it's only creating 'super pests' that drink roundup like koolaid.
With an Earth population of 7 Billion, that's an awful lot of shitting, pissing and flushing going on. Add to that what industry uses and it is hardly surprising.
umm... any beachgoer knows that the sea tosses up sand, rocks and debris during storm season, and also breaks the big rocks into little ones, pulling the shoreline under the water. Since coastlines are fractal, they can be very long for a certain somewhat small area of water.. also fresh sediments washed downstream from all the river systems. What about the displacements caused by these effects on the seabed, or sea plants and animals fixing atmospheric gasses into their biomass? No doubt these things have been considered.. but have they been considered accurately?
I think some of you are caught up comparing volumes of water displaced. I don't know with complete certainty since I didn't RTFA but I assume and I HOPE they based their statistic on the fact that water VAPOR is far more insulating that Co2 and other gases...
More water vapor in the air for evaporation due to irrigation etc >
Increased greenhouse effects >
Rising temperatures >
Melting ice =
Rising oceans
Common sense no?
JRB
I'm confused. How does locking up water in LAND reservoirs increase sea levels? No I didn't read the source article.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It's called Post-Glacial Rebound, the land was pushed down by the glaciers, it's still rising now that the ice is gone. And since water runs down hill the Great Lakes (among others) are draining.
Is it only the beds of the Great Lakes that are rising then? Not, like, the entire continent around them...??
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Coastal reservoirs with hydro-power dams. Place your municipal water intakes here so that the outgoing water supply is reused before it hits the oceans.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Water tends to flow. Yes, after being extracted from the earth much of it (hopefully) flows into the ocean (as opposed to outer space.) Although this does account for some water displacement, what is the point or insight we should take from this. Should it distract us from the fact that, much more crucially, the filtration process we have known and enjoyed for so long is being (almost systematically) ruined by interest who gain to profit from selling us clean bottled water and wiping out the 'free' water we have traditionally been able to enjoy as a species? Do you not see this as a simple side effect of this process? Sure we are having an effect on the system and should wise up or be culled, but in all likelyhood there's a mechanism already in place for that which we're simply unaware of. The earth will be fine. You and I and all of our digital ink and aspirations, on the other hand; are temporary. Not to say our bits and pieces aren't eternal, but that their coalescence into you and me and the meanings we assign to those things are. Olden evil always burns itself out in the end, and yeah there's alot of collateral damage if you assume the universe isn't unfolding as it should. My body is 80+ percent water right now. All of it will be gone next week, perhaps en route to the ocean....I actually quite often ensure this by peeing in the ocean. It's fun. But don't blame me.
More anthropogenic climate change bullshit, like the sea level rises measurably because we flush our toilets, go away Al Gore and go suck dick at the Bohemian Grove!!
So, what your saying is; why wipe your ass your only going to crap again...lol
I have never seen the math on the sealever rise that can be attributed to the Dutch, the Japanese, New York/New Jersey, the US navy and the Oil Industry.
As In what is the volume of water displaced by all the Polders in the Netherlands and elsewhere, all that water pumped to the other side of the Dyke eventually has to add up to some amount of rise.
The Islands created by the Japanese and others, the creation of Kansai airport and the palm Islands in Dubai have displaced an amount of water that has not just vanished.
The Volume of garbage disposed of off barges by NY/NJ and many others over the years takes up space water previously occupied.
then there is the total displacement of all the worlds Navies plus the Cargo and Oil industries ships plus the Cruise world. All that displaced water has to slosh somewhere.
How is more water a problem? Think of the additional shoreline! Also any number of inconvenient places would benefit from class cleansing, that is to say, the drowning of the poor ones.
We are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. I dismiss your god as you dismiss the others.
I believe in 2 gods. That would make you a monotheist not an atheist.
Ridiculous. Any 8th grader can do the math on "expansion." Double the sun's output for a year and you'd get a few inches rise total. Oh, and we'd all be dead.
We're coming out of glaciation (with ice caps) toward the Earth's normal state for most of the last 300 million years (no ice caps). Therefore, there will be some limited rise. Easily findable charts show the rise has slowed in the last 20K years from feet per year to inches to mere millimeters and will continue to slow.
But in 10 million years, yes, the caps are going away.
What we can do about this:
WE CAN'T DO A FUCKING THING ABOUT THIS, without developing technology to unnaturally change the environment.
This is why geologists laugh at "climate" "Scientists."
I'm going to ignore the blatant hysteria and sensationalization of the article and concentrate on one word in this article. "could"... this means in scientific terms "we have no clue why these figures don't add up and are just making shit up".
...oh, wait, that was another scam