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Earth's surface water change over the past 30 years

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 810–813 (2016)Cite this article

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Earth's surface gained 115,000 km2 of water and 173,000 km2 of land over the past 30 years, including 20,135 km2 of water and 33,700 km2 of land in coastal areas. Here, we analyse the gains and losses through the Deltares Aqua Monitor — an open tool that detects land and water changes around the globe.

Changes from land to water and vice versa are extremely relevant as witnessed by many recent news items: the President of Kiribati declared that his people would need to move to new grounds to prevent them from dying from the effects of sea-level rise on the atoll1; the impoundment of the Three Gorges Dam in China is causing massive inundations, forcing about 1.3 million people to resettle2; new islands along the coast of Dubai are created to provide new secluded areas for leisure and residence for the wealthy; and finally, the Mississippi Delta is losing thousands of hectares of land per year due to soil subsidence and lack of sediments3, further aggravated by sea-level rise.

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Figure 1: Heat map of global surface water and land changes.
Figure 2: Largest surface water and land changes from 1985 until 2015 grouped by drainage basins.
Figure 3: Examples of surface water changes between 1985 and 2015, detected using the Aqua Monitor.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Deltares, Boussinesqweg 1, Delft, 2629 HV, The Netherlands

    Gennadii Donchyts, Fedor Baart, Hessel Winsemius & Jaap Kwadijk

  2. Delft University of Technology, Stevinweg 1, Delft, 2628 CN, The Netherlands

    Gennadii Donchyts, Fedor Baart & Nick van de Giesen

  3. Google, Brandschenkestrasse 110, Zürich, 8002, Switzerland

    Noel Gorelick

  4. University of Twente, Enschede, 7500 AE, The Netherlands

    Jaap Kwadijk

Authors
  1. Gennadii Donchyts
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  6. Nick van de Giesen
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Correspondence to Gennadii Donchyts.

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Donchyts, G., Baart, F., Winsemius, H. et al. Earth's surface water change over the past 30 years. Nature Clim Change 6, 810–813 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3111

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