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<\/p>\nFor more than two decades, satellites have tracked the total amounts of water held in glaciers, ice sheets, lakes, rivers, soil and the world\u2019s vast natural reservoirs underground \u2014 aquifers. An extensive global analysis of that data now reveals fresh water is rapidly disappearing beneath much of humanity\u2019s feet, and large swaths of the Earth are drying out.<\/p>\n
Scientists are seeing \u201cmega-drying\u201d regions that are immense and expanding \u2014 one stretching from the western United States through Mexico to Central America, and another from Morocco to France, across the entire Middle East to northern China.<\/p>\n
There are two primary causes of the desiccation: rising temperatures unleashed by using oil and gas, and widespread overpumping of water that took millennia to accumulate underground. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese findings send perhaps the most alarming message yet about the impact of climate change on our water resources,\u201d said Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist and professor at Arizona State University who co-authored the study. \u201cThe rapid water cycle change that the planet has experienced over the last decade has unleashed a wave of rapid drying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since 2002, satellites have measured changes in the Earth\u2019s gravity field to track shifts in water, both frozen and liquid. What they sent back shows that nearly 6 billion people \u2014 three-fourths of humanity \u2014 live in the 101 countries that have been losing water.<\/p>\n
Large parts of the world are getting\u00a0drier<\/p>\n
Vast swaths of the world are losing fresh water. In addition to the melting of glaciers and ice caps, many regions are getting drier and depleting their\u00a0groundwater.<\/p>\n
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Countries losing the most water<\/p>\n
Model data are from February 2003 to April 2024.<\/p>\n
Chandanpurkar, Famiglietti, et al., (2025)<\/a><\/p>\n Sean Greene LOS ANGELES TIMES<\/p>\n Each year, these drying areas have been expanding by an area roughly twice the size of California.<\/p>\n Canada and Russia, where large amounts of ice and permafrost are melting, are losing the most fresh water. The United States, Iran and India also rank near the top, with rising temperatures and chronic overuse of groundwater.<\/p>\n Farms and cities are pulling up so much water using high-capacity pumps that much of the water evaporates and eventually ends up as rain falling over the ocean, measurably increasing sea level rise.<\/p>\n Water flows from a well to irrigate an orchard in Visalia. <\/p>\n (Irfan Khan \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n The study, published in the journal Science Advances<\/a>, found that these water losses now contribute more to sea level rise than the more widely understood melting of mountain glaciers or the Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets.<\/p>\n The staggeringly rapid expansion of the drying regions was surprising even for the scientists. Famiglietti said it is set to worsen in many areas, leading to \u201cwidespread aridification and desertification.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe found tremendous growth in the world\u2019s land areas that are experiencing extreme drought,\u201d Famiglietti said. \u201cOnly the tropics are getting wetter. The rest of the world\u2019s land areas are drying.\u201d<\/p>\n The wave of drying has prompted many people across the world\u2019s food-growing regions to drill more wells and rely more heavily on pumping groundwater. <\/p>\n The researchers estimate that 68% of the water the continents are losing, not including melting glaciers, is from groundwater depletion. And much of that water is to irrigate crops.<\/p>\n Where aquifer levels decline, wells and faucets increasingly sputter and run dry, people drill deeper and the land can sink as underground spaces collapse. <\/p>\n The loss may be irreversible, leaving current and future generations with less water. <\/p>\n Famiglietti said the potential long-term consequences are dire: Farmers will struggle to grow as much food, economic growth will be threatened, increasing numbers of people will flee drying regions, conflicts over water<\/a> are already increasing, and more governments will be destabilized in countries that aren\u2019t prepared.<\/p>\n The researchers estimated that the world\u2019s drying regions have been losing 368 billion metric tons of water per year. That\u2019s more than double the volume of Lake Tahoe, or 10 times Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. <\/p>\n All that water, year after year, has become a major contributor to sea level rise<\/a>, which is projected to cause worsening damages in the coming decades. <\/p>\n Previous studies have shown dropping groundwater levels<\/a>, dry regions getting drier<\/a> and these water losses contributing to sea level rise<\/a>. But the new study shows these changes are happening faster and on a larger scale than previously known.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is quite alarming,\u201d said Hrishikesh Chandanpurkar, an Arizona State research scientist who co-authored the study. \u201cWater touches everything in life. The effects of its irreversible decline are bound to trickle into everything.\u201d<\/p>\n He likened the global situation to a family overspending and drawing down their savings accounts.<\/p>\n \u201cOur bank balance is consistently decreasing. This is inherently unsustainable,\u201d Chandanpurkar said.<\/p>\n The draining of groundwater, often invisible, hides how much arid regions are drawing down their reserve accounts, he said. \u201cOnce these trust funds dry out, water bankruptcy is imminent.\u201d<\/p>\n The researchers examined data from two U.S.-German satellite missions, called Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE-Follow On<\/a>. <\/p>\n The scientists ranked California\u2019s Central Valley as the region where the fastest groundwater depletion is occurring, followed by parts of Russia, India and Pakistan. <\/p>\n In other research<\/a>, scientists have found that the last 25 years have probably been the driest in at least 1,200 years in western North America.<\/p>\n Over the last decade, groundwater losses have accelerated across the Colorado River Basin<\/a>.<\/p>\n And farming areas that a decade ago appeared in the satellite data as hot spots of drought and groundwater depletion, such as California\u2019s Central Valley and the Ogallala Aquifer beneath the High Plains, have expanded across the Southwest, through Mexico and into Central America.<\/p>\n Researchers identify western U.S. and Central America as one of four \u2018mega-drying\u2019\u00a0regions<\/p>\n These regions including large parts of Canada and Russia; southwestern North America and Central America; and a giant interconnected drying region spanning from North Africa to Europe, through the Middle East to northern China and Southeast\u00a0Asia.<\/p>\n Model data are from February 2003 to April 2024.<\/p>\n Chandanpurkar, Famiglietti, et al., (2025)<\/a><\/p>\n Sean Greene LOS ANGELES TIMES<\/p>\n The satellite data show that these and other regions are not only shifting to drier conditions on average, but are also failing to \u201clive within the means\u201d of the water they have available, Chandanpurkar said. <\/p>\n \u201cThe truth is, water is not being valued and the long-term reserves are exploited for short-term profits,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He said he hopes the findings will prompt action to address the chronic overuse of water.<\/p>\n In the study, the researchers wrote that \u201cwhile efforts to slow climate change may be sputtering,\u201d people urgently need to take steps to preserve groundwater. They called for national and global efforts to manage groundwater and \u201chelp preserve this precious resource for generations to come.\u201d<\/p>\n In many areas where groundwater levels are dropping<\/a>, there are no limits on well-drilling or how much a landowner can pump, and there is no charge for the water. Often, well owners don\u2019t even need to have a meter installed or report how much water they\u2019re using. <\/p>\n In California, farms producing vast quantities of nuts, fruits and other crops have drawn down aquifers so heavily that several thousand rural households have had their wells run dry<\/a> over the last decade, and the ground has been sinking as much as 1 foot per year<\/a>, damaging canals, bridges and levees.<\/p>\n The state in 2014 adopted a landmark groundwater law<\/a> that requires local agencies to curb widespread overpumping. But it gives many areas until 2040 to address their depletion problems, and in the meantime water levels have continued to fall<\/a>. <\/p>\n State officials and local agencies have begun investing in projects to capture more stormwater and replenish aquifers<\/a>. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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