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Time of India
12 hours ago
- Science
- Time of India
It's not the melting ice that's raising the seas; it's Earth's drying continents, study warns
Satellite data tracks a drying planet Live Events Where the water is going The reason: Human pressure on groundwater The warning (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel Everyday sources of life, the rivers we get our water from, the lakes we fish in, and the groundwater that sustains farms, are quietly disappearing. But the consequences stretch far beyond parched fields and empty reservoirs. A new study shows that this drying of Earth's continents, rather than the melting of polar ice sheets, has now become the dominant driver of global sea level rise The findings, published in Science Advances by researchers led by Hrishikesh Chandanpurkar of FLAME University, India, show that vast amounts of terrestrial water are draining into the oceans, tilting the global water balance in unprecedented two decades of satellite measurements from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and its follow-on mission, the team reconstructed how Earth's terrestrial water storage has shifted since results are stark: continental areas experiencing drying are expanding by an area nearly twice the size of California every year. In contrast, wet areas are not growing fast enough to compensate.'Dry areas are drying faster than wet areas are wetting,' the researchers write, warning that the shift is both accelerating and analysis found that much of the missing water has ended up in the oceans, where it is now adding more to sea level rise than the planet's ice were especially pronounced in high-latitude regions like Canada and Russia, where melting permafrost and ice are releasing stored non-glacial regions, up to 68 percent of the decline is tied directly to human groundwater depletion Across many continents, agriculture remains the biggest driver of groundwater loss. California's Central Valley, which supplies 70 percent of the world's almonds, and cotton-growing regions around the former Aral Sea in Central Asia are among the worst rainfall patterns becoming increasingly erratic due to fossil fuel-driven climate change, communities are drawing heavily on aquifers. But these deep water reserves are not replenishing nearly as quickly as they are drained.'At present, overpumping groundwater is the largest contributor to terrestrial water storage decline,' the study notes, amplifying the risks from heatwaves, droughts, and net result is a 'double jeopardy': continents are losing the freshwater resources that billions depend on, while oceans rise faster and swallow coastlines. Three out of every four people already live in countries where freshwater loss is England, for instance, 2025 was declared the driest spring in 132 years, with water reservoirs running so low that centuries-old structures, like an ancient packhorse bridge, authors stress that safeguarding groundwater must become a global priority. Even if slowing climate change remains politically fraught, policies to conserve and sustainably manage groundwater can be enacted now.'Protecting the world's groundwater supply is paramount in a warming world and on continents that we now know are drying,' they conclude.
India Today
08-08-2025
- Science
- India Today
Climate crisis drying out land twice the size of UP every year, satellite reveals
Dry regions across the world are expanding by an area nearly twice the size of Uttar Pradesh (UP) every year.A new study published in the journal Science Advances, in collaboration with NASA, reveals that several parts of the world are witnessing a sharp decline in water findings are based on satellite data collected from two US-German missions, Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO), spanning 2002 to Launched in 2002 and 2018, respectively, the GRACE and GRACE-FO satellites measure changes in the Earth's gravity field to track underground water storage and ice mass, offering an unprecedented look into the planet's water regions are experiencing rapidly changing weather events, leading to increasingly severe droughts, floods, and ARE DRY REGIONS GETTING DRIER?Several regions across the globe have become significantly drier compared to earlier decades. One major zone spans from southwestern North America to Central America, where prolonged dry spells are becoming the in places where rainfall remains relatively steady, climate change-induced shifts in global weather patterns are making conditions drier. For example, a prolonged La Nia phase from 2020 to 2023 placed Eastern Africa under sustained drought spread of the European drought has now created a mega-drying region stretching from North Africa through Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, northern China, and Southeast Asia. WET AREAS ARE ALSO CHANGINGResearchers also found that wet areas are getting wetter, particularly in East Africa and western Sub-Saharan Africa, driven by global warming and the Earth warms, more water vapour enters the atmosphere, leading to heavier rainfall in some regions, depending on their geography. But researchers caution that the pace at which dry regions are drying is outstripping the pace at which wet regions are getting global warming surpassing the Paris Agreement threshold, July 2025 recorded a temperature anomaly of 1.53C, well above the target limit. Widespread deforestation, unplanned urbanisation, and rising emissions are pushing climate systems toward irreversible avoid further devastation, experts stress the need for strict policy enforcement, sustainable development, and coordinated global action to slow down climate change and its impacts.- EndsMust Watch
India Today
05-05-2025
- Science
- India Today
108 billion tons per year: Antarctica witnesses sudden rise in glacier ice
As climate change continues to batter the world with extreme weather events occurring from the US to India, there is a surprising new trend observed on one end of the planet - have noted a surprising jump in the Antarctic ice for the first time in decades, according to a new study published by Science China Earth Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) mission and its successor, GRACE-FO (GRACE Follow-On) satellites have observed a rise in the ice mass across the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Winter sea ice cover in the Arctic has reached an unprecedented low. (Photo: AFP) advertisement The study led by Dr. Wang and Prof. Shen at Tongji University has found that between 2021 and 2023, the ice sheet experienced a record-breaking increase in overall experienced a moderate increase in sea ice until 2015, followed by a sharp decline starting in University researchers say satellite gravimetry data shows that from 2011 to 2020, the Antarctic Ice Sheet lost 142 gigatons of ice per year. That trend flipped between 2021 and 2023 when the ice sheet allegedly gained about 108 gigatons of ice per year. From 2002 to 2010, Antarctica's ice sheet was losing about 74 billion tons of ice per year. From 2011 to 2020, the loss nearly doubled to about 142 billion tons per year, mainly because of faster ice melting in West Antarctica and parts of East things changed after that — between 2021 and 2023, Antarctica actually gained ice at a rate of about 108 billion tons per year, mostly due to unusually high Antarctica is gaining, researchers earlier highlighted the trend is not visible in the Arctic. Winter sea ice cover in the Arctic has reached an unprecedented low at its annual peak, according to recent data from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).Nasa said that on March 22, 2025, the maximum extent of Arctic sea ice was recorded at 14.33 million square kilometres, falling below the previous record low of 14.41 million square kilometres set in Reel
