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The global groundwater crisis

Nature Climate Change volume 4, pages 945–948 (2014)Cite this article

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Groundwater depletion the world over poses a far greater threat to global water security than is currently acknowledged.

Groundwater — the water stored beneath Earth's surface in soil and porous rock aquifers — accounts for as much as 33% of total water withdrawals worldwide1. Over two billion people rely on groundwater as their primary water source2, while half or more of the irrigation water used to grow the world's food is supplied from underground sources1.

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Figure 1: NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission is providing new, space-based insights into the global nature of groundwater depletion3,4,5.
Figure 2: Water storage declines (mm equivalent water height) in several of the world's major aquifers in Earth's arid and semi-arid mid-latitudes, derived from the NASA GRACE satellite mission.

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Acknowledgements

The research highlighted in the figures and tables was supported by the University of California Office of the President, Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives and by the NASA GRACE Science Team. Conversations and collaborations with M. Rodell, M-H. Lo, J. T. Reager, K. A. Voss, A. S. Richey, S. L. Castle and R. A. Matthew greatly enriched the material discussed here.

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  1. and the Department of Earth System Science, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, J. S. Famiglietti is at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91109-8099, USA, University of California, Irvine, California 92697-3011, USA,

    J. S. Famiglietti

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Correspondence to J. S. Famiglietti.

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Famiglietti, J. The global groundwater crisis. Nature Clim Change 4, 945–948 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2425

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