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Majority of groundwater stores resilient to climate change:
Fewer of the world's large aquifers are depleting than previously estimated, according to a new study by the University of Sussex and UCL.
[...] Previous global studies of changes in groundwater storage, estimated using data from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite mission and global models, have concluded that intensifying human water withdrawals in the majority of the world's large aquifer systems are causing a sustained reduction in groundwater storage, depleting groundwater resources.
Yet this new study, published in Earth System Dynamics, reveals that depletion is not as widespread as reported, and that replenishment of groundwater storage depends upon extreme rainfall that is increasing under global climate change.
Aquifer depletion is occurring only in 5 localities.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Thursday August 27 2020, @10:31PM (6 children)
Don't worry about "depletion". The water doesn't go anywhere. Very little of it evaporates into space.
Contamination, that can be bad news. We're turning the aquifers into a giant piss pot
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @10:38PM
Many aquifers are not recharging faster than they are being drained. Earth isn't losing water, but the communities that rely on aquifers will eventually be in pretty big trouble.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday August 27 2020, @11:12PM (4 children)
The climate-change related problem with water isn't that the water disappears, but that it replaces fresh water with salt water. And the salt water doesn't do well with crops.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday August 27 2020, @11:18PM (3 children)
Yeah, that's part of the 'contamination' issue. We don't lose water, we poison it.
And really, we should be on desalinated water by now anyway. We really don't have to do anything more than collect what falls out the sky out over the oceans.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday August 28 2020, @12:13AM (2 children)
Alternately, we could do what I did, namely factor in available fresh water supplies in choices about where we live and even more importantly grow crops and livestock, favoring "right near huge amounts of fresh water" over "in the middle of a friggin desert". That's what humans largely did before modern times, after all.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday August 28 2020, @12:37AM
I hear ya, man! [youtu.be]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @02:50PM
> what humans largely did before modern times
So now all our metropolis's are built on top of the sites with the best farm land in the world. Thanks, old humans.