63 Trillion Gallons Groundwater - The United States, particularly the western region, has reportedly lost much of its groundwater due to the ongoing drought, causing the Earth to rise up about 0.16 inches for the last 18 months, a new study revealed.
Several reports about the 63 trillion gallons groundwater stated that the condition was a lot worse in the snow-deprived mountains of California, where the Earth is said to have lifted up to 0.6 inches.
An estimated 63 trillion galloons groundwater - an equivalent of flooding four inches of water all over the United States west of the Rocky Mountains - is lost since 2013, according to the researchers from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the U.S. Geological Survey, the Los Angeles Times has learned.
A ghastly reckoning of the drought's damage has been brought up by the study about the 63 trillion gallons groundwater published online by the journal Science Thursday.
"We found that it's most severe in California, particularly in the Sierras," coauthor Duncan Agnew, professor of geophysics at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said. "It's predominantly in the Coast Ranges and the Sierras showing the most uplift, and hence, that's where we believe is the largest water loss."
It is also reportedly almost the amount of ice lost from the Greenland ice cap annually because of global warming.
Scientists of the 63 trillion galloons groundwater study came to this conclusion by studying the data collected from numerous GPS sensors scattered all over the western United States. The sensors were installed basically to monitor small changes in the ground due to earthquakes.
The GPS however, can also be utilized to show very slight changes in elevation. And since ground water is said to be very heavy that its weight depresses the planet's upper crust, when ground water and the weight are removed, the earth's crust would spring upward. The GPS then would detect how much higher the soil has risen as as effect of groundwater loss.
The 63 trillion galloons groundwater study also revealed that highest uplift of the Earth took place in the California mountains since it is where there is so much water underneath. Whereas, in the Great Basin and Nevada the uplift was less.
"You can only lose water where there's water to lose," Agnew stated.
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