Ancient water being depleted quickly, climate change slowing recharge

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n alarming satellite-based analysis from NASA finds that the world is depleting groundwater — the water stored underground in soil and aquifers — at an unprecedented rate.

A new Nature Climate Change piece, “The global groundwater crisis,” by James Famiglietti, a leading hydrologist at the NASA Jet PropulsionLaboratory, warns that “most of the major aquifers in the world’s arid and semi-arid zones, that is, in the dry parts of the world that rely most heavily on groundwater, are experiencing rapid rates of groundwater depletion.”

The groundwater at some of the world’s largest aquifers — in the U.S. High Plains, California’s Central Valley, China, India, and elsewhere — is being pumped out “at far greater rates than it can be naturally replenished.”

Read the ClimateProgress story - “NASA Bombshell: Global Groundwater Crisis Threatens Our Food Supplies And Our Security.”

(The world’s “ancient water” – our aquifers – that took centuries to fill, are being depleted in just decades and everywhere they are dropping by metres)