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NASA Says Humans Are Causing Massive Changes In Location of Water Around the World (desertsun.com)
Using measurements from Earth-observing satellites, NASA scientists have found that humans have dramatically altered the location of water around the world. "The team of researchers analyzed 14 years of data from NASA's twin GRACE satellites and studied regions that have seen large increases or decreases in the total amount of freshwater, including water in lakes and rivers and water stored in underground aquifers, soil, snow and ice," reports The Desert Sun. From the report: The scientists examined precipitation trends and other data to determine the most likely causes of these huge losses and gains of water around the world. Their findings in a new study reveal that of the 34 "hotspots" of water change in places from California to China, the trends in about two-thirds of those areas may be linked to climate change or human activities, such as excessive groundwater pumping in farming regions. In eight of the 34 regions, the researchers said the trends reflect "possible" or "probable" impacts of climate change, including losses of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, precipitation increases in the high latitudes of Eurasia and North America, the retreat of Alaska's glaciers and melting ice fields in Patagonia.
They ascribed changes in 12 regions to natural variability, including a progression from a dry period to a wet period in the northern Great Plains, a drought in eastern Brazil and wetter periods in the Amazon and tropical West Africa. In 14 of the areas -- more than 40 percent of the hotspots -- the scientists associated the water shifts partially or largely with human activity. That included groundwater depletion combined with drought in Southern California and the southern High Plains from Kansas to the Texas Panhandle, as well as in the northern Middle East, northern Africa, southern Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. The first-of-its-kind study has been published in the journal Nature.
They ascribed changes in 12 regions to natural variability, including a progression from a dry period to a wet period in the northern Great Plains, a drought in eastern Brazil and wetter periods in the Amazon and tropical West Africa. In 14 of the areas -- more than 40 percent of the hotspots -- the scientists associated the water shifts partially or largely with human activity. That included groundwater depletion combined with drought in Southern California and the southern High Plains from Kansas to the Texas Panhandle, as well as in the northern Middle East, northern Africa, southern Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. The first-of-its-kind study has been published in the journal Nature.
Intensive agriculture, water reservoirs, flood protection walls, hydroelectric plants, Three Gorges Dam, Aral Sea, etc. We are massively changing our environment since the dawn of civilisation, this is not surprising at all. A more interesting study would look into the impact these changes have on biodiversity and (micro-) climate.
Who the hell mods this garbage up? It's offtopic and there are far more useful things to discuss. For example, I live in Nebraska and these issues are relevant here. A lot of the state's water comes from the Ogallala Aquifer, and we are using it too rapidly. The groundwater is essential for agriculture from the Sandhills to the caprock in west Texas. Depleting the groundwater is causing subsidence of the land and surface streams are also drying up. With the exception of the Sandhills, it's very hard for precipitation to infiltrate all the way to the aquifer. Recharge is difficult, and we are using groundwater faster than it can be recharged. A lot of it is for irrigation and growing crops where they shouldn't be grown. I know that Nebraska is the Cornhusker State, but we just don't get enough rain to support growing corn in most of the state.
It's quite an important issue, and if you really must discuss politics, you can discuss water rights agreements and who really owns the water on your property. Kansas sued Nebraska over the streamflow in the Republican River. I believe it has changed, but at one point, it was illegal in Colorado to retain the rainwater that falls on your property, and that you don't really own the water. It's far more interesting than these rubbish posts about Trump and Hillary, and you can even still argue about politics if you want.
Just look at California, there was never much water and what is there gets mainly exported as vegetables, fruits, nuts, and wine. The rest is wasted on an insane number of golf courses.
and the southern High Plains from Kansas to the Texas Panhandle
Q) Why is Kansas so windy?
A) Because Oklahoma sucks and Nebraska blows.
The ingenuity of the free market will surely come up with an abundant alternative to water.
Take a look at an atlas. See how much we love to live near the sea? Those large cities radiate political force that draws in water from lakes and rivers thousands of miles inland, forcing inland populations to pump local groundwater.
If coastal cities would desalinate their own local water supplies, the lakes and rivers would now be available for use by those living inland.
California, for example, is likely fucking itself out of an agricultural future, if it keeps going the way it has been. Nobody wants to give them more water.
If nobody wants to eat fresh vegetables, that's fine, but this is where they are produced for a reason. Over 50% of the food we eat in the USA is produced in California. Those vast fields in the midwest mostly produce export crops, and corn for fuel ethanol which is grown continuously and with synthetic fertilizers that literally destroy topsoil and turn it into an inert hydroponic growth medium. California is the best place in the USA to produce vegetables, period, the end. Mexico is the next-best place nearby (it's actually too hot to grow a lot of things there) but then you have to pay more for shipping, and produce is picked even less ripe and gassed even more to ripen because it has to travel further. It also further restricts varieties, because some travel better than others.
But by all means, don't give California water. We'll give you back fifty dollar tomatoes.
That is only half the story, the other half of it is the stupidity of growing water intensive crops in places that get less then 5 inches of rain every year and irrigating these crops with ground water. Ground water is not an infinite resource, especially in relatively arid places like much of California is. There is a well known photo of Joseph Poland of the U.S. Geological Survey who used a telephone pole to demonstrate where a farmer would have been standing in 1925, 1955 and where Poland was then standing. By then the land in the San Joaquin Valley had sunk nearly 30 feet and this was in 1977. Since then much more water has been pumped out of the ground, apparently on the assumption that there is an infinite supply since California does not regulate ground water like surface water. All over the state people are finding themselves drilling hundreds and even thousands of feet for ground water and when they find it what they pump up are ground water deposits laid down 20.000 year ago when mastodons and sabre toothed cats still roamed the landscape. Land subsidence due to ground water depletion has caused sinking bridges, cracking canals and buckling highways, torn runways to name but a few problems and repairing them has cost the California taxpayer billions of dollars. This whole issue is about stupid water management and waste which is something that should be of particular interest to California farmers and it should be very much in their interest to support water management reform seeing as how their entire existence stands and falls with proper water management.
The rest is wasted on an insane number of golf courses.
Actually, golf courses are going out of fashion and out of business (or just "closed" in the case of government-owned ones) in California.
Newer generations mostly aren't taking up golf and older ones are finding other things to do or just getting too old to enjoy it. Meanwhile the cost of water (for the horribly thirsty institutions) has skyrocketed and regulatory bodies are rejecting applications when misguided city councils or developers try to install one, rather than, say, parks with low-water landscaping) to fill their "open space" requirements.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way