The northern hemisphere is experiencing what scientists label extreme continental drying. Stated simply, an alarming loss of freshwater from northern hemisphere land masses. Storage of freshwater on land (terrestrial water storage) is found in creeks, rivers, and lakes, groundwater, soil moisture, ice in permafrost, and water held in glaciers.
NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), and its successor follow-on (GRACE-FO) missions assessed water loss during the period 2002-2024. A recent paper published this summer in the journal Science Advances details the results of this US-German mission. The findings should concern us all.
Water is being lost from the northern continents at alarming rates as a result of increased global temperatures and its consequences such as longer growing seasons, increased evaporation, increased water demand of plants (evapotranspiration), dramatic increases in groundwater pumping, and loss of glacier water. Remembering the hydrologic cycle, water is not consumed but is redistributed as precipitation. With seventy-one percent of the Earth covered in water, most precipitation falls upon and becomes seawater or eventually flows to seawater.
The result is a dramatic transfer of mass from the continents to oceans, leading to additional pressures on sea level rise. On land, the effect has magnified competition for scarce water resources, threatened food security (with food production being the largest user of freshwater) and impacted sustainable drinking water resources.
We are at a juncture in our ability to reverse or even slow the effects. Having information and technology to monitor threats is essential to food security, agribusiness, and wise water planning. Yet, cuts have been announced that would eliminate fully functioning in-orbit climate satellite missions like MODIS, OCO, Terra, and Aura, that carry out high-resolution imaging, measure solar radiation, precipitation, and detect wildfires. Besides from the unwise decision to eliminate fully functioning paid for infrastructure that gather critical data, the vast percentage of the costs of these missions has already been spent. NASA missions are front-forward cost projects with the bulk of the costs incurred in research and development and launch. The costs of maintaining a satellite in orbit and collecting data is pittance in comparison. The logic is unclear. Many see just another attack on climate science and a head in the sand mentality.
Ultimately, it will be up to the US Supreme Court to assess the power of the executive versus the Congress to fund and defund. How the Court rules, could impact our world for a generation.