Shrinking freshwater availability increasing land contribution to sea level rise

https://news.asu.edu/20250725-environment-and-sustainability-new-global-study-shows-freshwater-disappearing-alarming

by ornel • 12 months ago

150 52 12 months ago

news.asu.edu

jfengel• 12 months ago

Unlike climate change, this is a self correcting problem. We'll tap the last of the fresh water, and then no more sea level rise (from that source).

Problem solved, once and for all.

treyd• 12 months ago

The polar ice caps are the same way. Once we melt all the ice then the sea level rise will stop, and we can just deal with the change in lifestyle.

oh_my_goodness• 12 months ago

I think the change in lifestyle from using up all the groundwater would be pretty severe.

Gibbon1• 12 months ago

Considering current shitshow reaction to having to deal with smaller issues I'm not optimistic about how that's going to play out.

marcosdumay• 12 months ago

Well, that applies to most of our habitat-change problems.

causal• 12 months ago

Solutions that include mass die-off of human populations are generally considered incomplete

Ekaros• 12 months ago

But they are effective in reducing emissions.

ada1981• 12 months ago

It’s a good reminder that “climate change” will be a minor inconvenience for the rich, and an existential crisis for everyone else.

And that most of the inconvience will be needing to deploy robots to keep the poor away.

slt20212• 12 months ago

thats what revolutionary movements are for: to organize "everyone else" and physically purge the elites that dont care about the crisis affecting regular people

andyferris• 12 months ago

Just like the coal, gas, oil and forests - so exactly like climate change, in fact...

(It's a problem that saturates but not a problem that self-corrects, and the saturation point is undesirable in any case)

giantg22• 12 months ago

So they claim the majority of the water is ground water and also that it is due to climate change. But I thought I've seen other studies talking about how ground water is being depleted at a higher rate than it could be replaced, even using historical averages. This sounds more like a population/industrialization issue than a climate issue.

pstuart2• 12 months ago

I think the distinction is between rainwater runoff vs aquifer depletion. They are related, and if we were collectively smarter we would do a better job of managing the runoff to help restore the aquifers.

DaveZale2• 12 months ago

in some parts of the country (US), interstate water agreements promise a certain volume of water to be delivered from one state to another, in which cases, runoff is sometimes required. Legal agreements.

cycomanic• 12 months ago

So they claim the majority of the water is ground water and also that it is due to climate change. But I thought I've seen other studies talking about how ground water is being depleted at a higher rate than it could be replaced, even using historical averages. This sounds more like a population/industrialization issue than a climate issue.

I'm not sure I understand where you see a contradiction. Land areas are using groundwater faster than it can be replenished, so land is getting drier. That's according to the article (just basing of the summary not the scientific one) is driven by both overuse and drier and warmer weather. The thing is, that's a feedback loop, if it gets drier we'll be using more groundwater for irrigation. So both processes are driven by climate change.

giantg22• 12 months ago

"is driven by both overuse and drier and warmer weather."

It wasn't that there is a contradiction. If the over use has been happening for decades, and it's at a rate faster than historical replenishment could happen anyways (before "climate change), then this would indicate that over use is the primary cause. Drier weather is a contributing factor in the pace of depletion, but in no way could be the solitary cause nor cure. Even in the article they mention the demands related to a growing population and industrial agriculture (article also mentions potential food scarcity).

garrettdreyfus8• 12 months ago

I’m not sure this title is completely correct

“The researchers identified the type of water loss on land, and for the first time, found that 68% came from groundwater alone — contributing more to sea level rise than glaciers and ice caps on land.”

They are saying the leading loss of water loss is from ground water. The largest contributor to sea level rise I would guess is still thermosteric sea level rise due to the ocean becoming warmer and less dense

See ipcc https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-9/

9.6.1 Global and Regional Sea Level Change in the Instrumental Era

In particular, Cross-Chapter 9.1, Figure 1 | Global Energy Inventory and Sea Level Budget. Panel b

EDIT: @dang could the submission title be changed to the article or journal article title?

“New global study shows freshwater is disappearing at alarming rates”

“Unprecedented continental drying, shrinking freshwater availability, and increasing land contributions to sea level rise”

garrettdreyfus8• 12 months ago

My reading of Figure 6 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx0298 suggests that this study still has thermosteric effects making up the majority of sea level rise.

I also highly recommend reading up on the GRACE satellite used in this study it is amazing https://gracefo.jpl.nasa.gov/resources/50/how-grace-fo-measu...

yboris• 12 months ago

Thank you for sharing, GRACE-FO feels to me like a brilliant design!

mturmon• 12 months ago

it is amazing

Indeed!

The GRACE measurement of mass change is one of the more revolutionary advances in Earth science remote sensing in the last few decades. It has provided a unique and completely novel view of groundwater mass change. Grace is the main reason we know so much about the massive groundwater loss in the Oglala aquifer in the US Midwest, in the Central Basin in California, and in northern India. Water well data exists but it is very sparse and idiosyncratic.

It’s also our main window into mass losses in ice sheets in high latitudes (Greenland, Antarctica). We have radar altimetry data from Antarctica, but because of glacial rebound and other effects, it’s not easy to translate height changes into mass changes. Grace measures mass change directly.

Several authors of the cited study are on the science team. It is a JPL instrument.

The original Grace pair used radio to measure separation and velocity, while the follow-up Grace-FO uses a laser. I assume the small wavelength of the laser provides a more accurate measurement. It’s possible that Grace-FO has a slightly higher spatial resolution (I’ve worked with Grace but not Grace-FO); the horizontal resolution of Grace is about 100km or about 1 degree.

From an inference perspective the measurement is very interesting. They pool about a month’s worth of observations of the distance and velocity of a pair of satellites, and do a Bayesian inversion to obtain a parameterized gravitational potential for that month. The map from gravitational potential to observation is known analytically, so it’s readily possible to get a spatial covariance for the gravitational potential, as well as the point estimate.

srameshc• 12 months ago

New findings from studying over two decades of satellite observations reveal that the Earth’s continents have experienced unprecedented freshwater loss since 2002, driven by climate change, unsustainable groundwater use and extreme droughts.

The title captures the crux of the story

garrettdreyfus8• 12 months ago

Sorry I am referring to HN submission title not the article title

ornel2• 12 months ago

Quote from the paper: "the continents are now the leading contributor (44%) to mass-driven GMSL rise". As regards to non-mass-driven rise, another article[0] states, "Ice-mass loss—predominantly from glaciers—has caused twice as much sea-level rise since 1900 as has thermal expansion". I think the findings about sea level rise are as interesting as the ones about fresh water disappearance.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2591-3

garrettdreyfus8• 12 months ago

The study you cite is talking about sea level rise since 1900 which is a very different story.

The IPCC section “9.6.1.1 Global Mean Sea Level Change Budget in the Pre-satellite Era” says Since SROCC, a new ocean heat content reconstruction (Section 2.3.3.1; Zanna et al., 2019) has allowed global thermosteric sea level change to be estimated over the 20th century. As a result, the sea level budget for the 20th century can now be assessed for the first time. For the periods 1901–1990 and 1901–2018, the assessed very likely range for the sum of components is found to be consistent with the assessed very likely range of observed GMSL change (medium confidence), in agreement with Frederikse et al. (2020b; Table 9.5). This represents a major step forward in the understanding of observed GMSL change over the 20th century, which is dominated by glacier (52%) and Greenland Ice Sheet mass loss (29%) and the effect of ocean thermal expansion (32%), with a negative contribution from the LWS change (–14%). While the combined mass loss for Greenland and glaciers is consistent with SROCC, updates in the underlying datasets lead to differences in partitioning of the mass loss.”

Edit: by a different story I mean a different story from what is the leading driver of sea level rise. Sea level rise from ice melt was larger since 1900 because sea level rise in general was less fast back then and global mean temperature rise was much smaller so thermosteric sea level rise played less of a role. Thermosteric sea level rise is larger than ground water factors, both will be eclipsed by ice melt in the upcoming century.

I would note the authors pointedly do not call it the leading driver of sea level rise.

cwillu• 12 months ago

@dang doesn't do anything; but they're quite responsive to email.

dang• 12 months ago

Ok, I've put the second suggestion up there. Thanks!

(Submitted title was "Freshwater loss from land is the lead driver of sea-level rise")

ornel2• 12 months ago

Thanks dang and everyone for the better title and for clarifying this further

robertclaus• 12 months ago

Interesting second order effect of global warming.

cubefox• 12 months ago

Original title: "New global study shows freshwater is disappearing at alarming rates"

SoftTalker• 12 months ago

So go long on desalination tech?

ralfd• 12 months ago

Easier said than done. What companies have stock? Or just buy Jinko solar?

pcdoodle• 12 months ago

The title gave me a stroke.

monkeywork• 12 months ago

Recent and relevant video from Hank Green: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pThcIgJyNME

HocusLocus• 12 months ago

Sea level rise (#2) is a 'crisis' for absolutely no one.

I set an alarm for (#1), "Preparing for the low pressure 12ft tidal/storm surge or the 18ft tsunami that could arrive as early as tomorrow and probably will within 10 years, unless one is incredibly dumb or has never lived near the ocean."

I did not set an alarm for #2.

misja111• 12 months ago

“Continents are drying, freshwater availability is shrinking, and sea-level rise is accelerating.

Does anybody have any data about the accelerating sea-level rising? As a Dutch person I'm of course very interested in this, but I can't find any data that supports this.

BlackFly• 12 months ago

This is what I found:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/sea-level

I don't see much of an acceleration...

Shrinking freshwater availability increasing land contribution to sea level rise

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