From the Alamosa Citizen Monday Briefing:
This report by Science.org and this explainer from the investigative nonprofit ProPublica on the drying climate puts the San Luis Valley squarely in the camp of a mega-drought region that is dry and getting drier. It also signals the uphill battle irrigators in the San Luis Valley and the Upper Rio Grande face as they implement their own practices to reduce groundwater pumping and efforts to recharge the aquifers of the Valley; few other regions facing the same quandary of overpumping and depleting aquifers have committed to the same. In this case, there’s a lot others can learn from the Valley’s way of addressing its drying problem.
Click the link to access the research article on the Science Advances website (HRISHIKESH A. CHANDANPURKAR, JAMES S. FAMIGLIETTI, KAUSHIK GOPALAN, DAVID N. WIESE, YOSHIHIDE WADA, KAORU KAKINUMA, JOHN T. REAGER, and FAN ZHANG). Here’s the abstract:
Changes in terrestrial water storage (TWS) are a critical indicator of freshwater availability. We use NASA GRACE/GRACE-FO data to show that the continents have undergone unprecedented TWS loss since 2002. Areas experiencing drying increased by twice the size of California annually, creating “mega-drying” regions across the Northern Hemisphere. While most of the world’s dry/wet areas continue to get drier/wetter, dry areas are now drying faster than wet areas are wetting. Changes in TWS are driven by high-latitude water losses, intense Central American/European droughts, and groundwater depletion, which accounts for 68% of TWS loss over non-glaciated continental regions. “Continental drying” is having profound global impacts. Since 2002, 75% of the population lives in 101 countries that have been losing freshwater water. Furthermore, the continents now contribute more freshwater to sea level rise than the ice sheets, and drying regions now contribute more than land glaciers and ice caps. Urgent action is required to prepare for the major impacts of results presented.