<
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-03-28/earths-big-dry-out-freshwater-loss-irreversible-climate-change/105100272>
"The Earth is getting dryer and may have hit a tipping point for how much water
is stored in soil because of climate change.
So great is the decline in soil moisture that it has outpaced Greenland's
melting ice sheets in its contribution to sea level rise and changes to the
wobble in Earth's rotation.
That's according to a new study in the journal
Science, which suggests more
than 2,614 gigatonnes of moisture was lost from our planet between 2000 to
2016.
It's a trend that scientists think led to a major shift in land-based water
storage — sources like groundwater, rivers, lakes, soil moisture and ice — from
1992.
The researchers estimated between 2000 to 2002, soil moisture loss was about
1,614 Gt, equivalent to a 1.95 millimetre per year rise in sea level.
That's compared to a 900 Gt loss of ice in Greenland from 2002 to 2006, which
contributes to about 0.8mm of sea level rise annually.
Global soil moisture levels have not recovered, and a further 1,009 Gt was lost
from 2003 to 2016."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
