New NASA data: the world is running out of water

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Wednesday, 17 June 2015

quote [ Scientists had long suspected that humans were taxing the world?s underground water supply, but the NASA data was the first detailed assessment to demonstrate that major aquifers were indeed struggling to keep pace with demands from agriculture, growing populations, and industries such as mining. ]

That's just fucking great.

Reveal

New NASA data show how the world is running out of water

By Todd C. Frankel June 16 at 8:15 PM

The world?s largest underground aquifers ? a source of fresh water for hundreds of millions of people ? are being depleted at alarming rates, according to new NASA satellite data that provides the most detailed picture yet of vital water reserves hidden under the Earth?s surface.

Twenty-one of the world?s 37 largest aquifers ? in locations from India and China to the United States and France ? have passed their sustainability tipping points, meaning more water was removed than replaced during the decade-long study period, researchers announced Tuesday. Thirteen aquifers declined at rates that put them into the most troubled category. The researchers said this indicated a long-term problem that?s likely to worsen as reliance on aquifers grows.

Scientists had long suspected that humans were taxing the world?s underground water supply, but the NASA data was the first detailed assessment to demonstrate that major aquifers were indeed struggling to keep pace with demands from agriculture, growing populations, and industries such as mining.

?The situation is quite critical,? said Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA?s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and principal investigator of the University of California Irvine-led studies.

Underground aquifers supply 35 percent of the water used by humans worldwide. Demand is even greater in times of drought. Rain-starved California is currently tapping aquifers for 60 percent of its water use as its rivers and above-ground reservoirs dry up, a steep increase from the usual 40 percent. Some expect water from aquifers will account for virtually every drop of the state?s fresh water supply by year end.

The aquifers under the most stress are in poor, densely populated regions, such as northwest India, Pakistan and North Africa, where alternatives are limited and water shortages could quickly lead to instability.

The researchers used NASA?s GRACE satellites to take precise measurements of the world?s groundwater aquifers. The satellites detected subtle changes in the Earth?s gravitational pull, noting where the heavier weight of water exerted a greater pull on the orbiting spacecraft. Slight changes in aquifer water levels were charted over a decade, from 2003 to 2013.

?This has really been our first chance to see how these large reservoirs change over time,? said Gordon Grant, a research hydrologist at Oregon State University, who was not involved in the studies.

But the NASA satellites could not measure the total capacity of the aquifers. The size of these tucked-away water supplies remains something of a mystery. Still, the satellite data indicated that some aquifers may be much smaller than previously believed, and most estimates of aquifer reserves have ?uncertainty ranges across orders of magnitude,? according to the research.

Aquifers can take thousands of years to fill up and only slowly recharge with water from snowmelt and rains. Now, as drilling for water has taken off across the globe, the hidden water reservoirs are being stressed.

?The water table is dropping all over the world,? Famiglietti said. ?There?s not an infinite supply of water.?

The health of the world?s aquifers varied widely, mostly dependent on how they were used. In Australia, for example, the Canning Basin in the country?s western end had the third-highest rate of depletion in the world. But the Great Artesian Basin to the east was among the healthiest.

The difference, the studies found, is likely attributable to heavy gold and iron ore mining and oil and gas exploration near the Canning Basin. Those are water-intensive activities.

The world?s most stressed aquifer ? defined as suffering rapid depletion with little or no sign of recharging ? was the Arabian Aquifer, a water source used by more than 60 million people. That was followed by the Indus Basin in India and Pakistan, then the Murzuk-Djado Basin in Libya and Niger.

California?s Central Valley Aquifer was the most troubled in the United States. It is being drained to irrigate farm fields, where drought has led to an explosion in the number of water wells being drilled. California only last year passed its first extensive groundwater regulations. But the new law could take two decades to take full effect.

Also running a negative balance was the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains Aquifer, which stretches across the southeast coast and Florida. But three other aquifers in the middle of the country appeared to be in relatively good shape.

Some groundwater filters back down to aquifers, such as with field irrigation. But most of it is lost to evaporation or ends up being deposited in oceans, making it harder to use. A 2012 study by Japanese researchers attributed up to 40 percent of the observed sea-level rise in recent decades to groundwater that had been pumped out, used by humans and ended up in the ocean.

Famiglietti said problems with groundwater are exacerbated by global warming, which has caused the regions closest to the equator to get drier and more extreme latitudes to experience wetter and heavier rains. A self-reinforcing cycle begins. People living in mid-range latitudes not only pump more water from aquifers to contend with drier conditions, but that water ? once removed from the ground ? also then evaporates and gets recirculated to areas far north and south.

The studies were published Tuesday in the Water Resources Research journal.

Famiglietti said he hoped the findings would spur discussion and further research into how much groundwater is left.

?We need to get our heads together on how we manage groundwater,? he said, ?because we?re running out of it.?

[SFW] [food & drink]	[+5]
[by sanepride@1:31amGMT]

Comments

icpenners said^[2] @ 7:13am GMT on 17th Jun [Score:2]

First you warn that sea levels are rising, now you complain you're running out of water. Get your stories straight, liberaltards.

Abdul Alhazred said @ 7:17am GMT on 17th Jun [Score:1 Underrated]

Jesus. For a second there I thought he really had arrived.

HoZay said @ 8:57am GMT on 17th Jun

It was him all along.

Longhair said @ 12:28pm GMT on 17th Jun [Score:1 Funny]

Actually it was me.

Abdul Alhazred said @ 6:54am GMT on 17th Jun [Score:1 Interesting]

Here in UAE desalination is actually a byproduct of power generation. They use the seawater to cool the exhaust steam from the generators, gradually raising it to boiling and go from there. They then run the distilled water through a bunch of crushed rock to give it some mineral content before piping it out as drinking water.

Abdul Alhazred said @ 6:56am GMT on 17th Jun [Score:1 Insightful]

I hear that in California they're starting to go to the "toilet to tap" closed loop water system. While this sounds good on paper, the thing no one is talking about is all the pharmaceuticals the flush through peoples' bodies, everything from psych meds to birth control pills. After a few cycles through the population should show some really interesting effects.

HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 7:50am GMT on 17th Jun

OutdoorRudy said @ 4:45pm GMT on 17th Jun

I never thought of that. Does purifying water get rid of those? I would assume boiling but then again some chemicals could possible travel with, maybe?

At work, can someone research this and report back to SE for this evenings 3 beer rants.

Abdul Alhazred said @ 12:18pm GMT on 18th Jun [Score:1 Informative]

I think this is a reasonably legitimate source. In 2011 a Harvard publication stated that there are pharmaceuticals in the drinking water.

http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/drugs-in-the-water

I happen to have worked in water treatment and wastewater treatment at one point, and I don't think there is really any way to truly get rid of the chemicals. Wastewater treatment is mainly concerned with taking the solids out of the water, which means that the water is separated out, filtered and sterilized somewhat, sometimes using UV. That won't affect dissolved chemicals. Water treatment does essentially the same, but adds chlorimides (as I recall) to kill bacteria. Again, I doubt that would have much effect on the compounds.

But I am no expert. I would hope that California would have hired people who are to determine if this was going to be a major problem, and that they weren't paid off to skew the results in favor of the closed cycle.

captainstubing said @ 3:41pm GMT on 20th Jun

Personally, I wouldn't use the phrase "looks good on paper" when discussing turning effluent into drinking water.

lilmookieesquire said @ 1:42am GMT on 17th Jun

This doesn't bother me. There's a lot of waste to eliminate. The future could go towards aquaponics and enclosed systems. Eventually we'll have to probably invest in desalinization. There's been talk about water becoming the new oil and squabbles in North America between Canada and the US. I think it's quite interesting- but this isn't really new-new. The general idea has been out there for a long time.

sanepride said @ 3:07am GMT on 17th Jun [Score:2]

Stillsuits FTW.

HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 3:08am GMT on 17th Jun [Score:1 Informative]

Watch the lucky ol' Middle East wind up with all the Sandworms...

lilmookieesquire said @ 4:04am GMT on 17th Jun [Score:1 Informative]

US.
California.
A Desert State.

Jodan said @ 5:33am GMT on 17th Jun

Always though those were cool i think we are a long way from fremen but it would be nice for that not to happen.

lilmookieesquire said @ 7:26am GMT on 17th Jun

Would probably be good for space

HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 1:47am GMT on 17th Jun

So... good thing we're pumping so much frack-water underground to get oil, huh?

MadMarchHarris said @ 5:02am GMT on 17th Jun

http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-doing/

Fracking is barely even a blip in human water usage. And even if it we got to the point where we were so desperate for water not a drop could be wasted we could just extract and purify the water. It doesn't just get left in the ground during the fracking process.

HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 6:51am GMT on 17th Jun

My point was more to the chemicals being used in the water. Besides, it's kind of hard to "purify" something when the stuff going into it is a "trade secret."

MadMarchHarris said^[1] @ 4:58pm GMT on 17th Jun

Some of those numbers are a complete joke. 780 gallons of some form of lead over a period of 4 years? I could physically carry more lead than that to a well by hand in less time if I made a mission of it. And this is all based on the assumption that the chemicals are going into the water table which even the EPA admits there's no proven cases of it happening.

My biggest concern with fracking isn't the process being done correctly. It's sloppy set-up and corner cutting that I would be worried about. Nobody needs any help conjuring up gigantic oil company fuck-ups or their consequences. But they're the result of industry failure not a faulty process.

HoZay said @ 7:48pm GMT on 17th Jun

A process that includes industry doing the right thing is a faulty process.

lilmookieesquire said @ 8:22am GMT on 17th Jun

I thought the issue was possibly contaminating the ground water.

OutdoorRudy said @ 4:43pm GMT on 17th Jun

Thats exactly the issue. You add chemicals that are trade secrets that then leech into the water table.

MadMarchHarris said @ 4:51pm GMT on 17th Jun

Which would be a problem if fracking and aquifers took place on even close to the same strata. Most aquifers are within a few hundred feet of the surface. Natural gas wells from kilometers down. Fracking can force methane from lower strata into drinking water but it can be vented very easily.

robotroadkill said @ 3:22am GMT on 17th Jun

Oh that's just whining from this entitled Millenial generation who think just because they're born there should be resources left over for them.

arrowhen said @ 3:35am GMT on 17th Jun

Luckily, snake people don't need as much water.

lilmookieesquire said @ 4:06am GMT on 17th Jun

It's like, what, 4 quarts a day- but that includes the liquids from digesting your enemies.

lilmookieesquire said @ 5:55am GMT on 17th Jun

Right? What the fuck did they ever do to earn that water?

1	ScoobySnacks
2	HoZay
3	Paracetamol
4	cb361
5	Ankylosaur