Humans have used so much groundwater water that we changed the way the Earth rotates - by AndyTomaswick
Part of that impact is on the Earth’s rotation. The centrifugal force of the Earth’s rotation constantly fights against its gravity to throw the water on its surface out into space. When the total amount of water on that surface changes by more than two gigatons, that will significantly affect the balance between those two forces. Enough that it has pushed the Earth’s rotational poles to the East by about 80 centimeters.
That trend is continuing, though the latest data used in the study was from 2010; people have continued to pump groundwater at an increasingly frantic pace to try to make up for the last of freshwater in some of the most popular parts of the world to live. In particular, the study notes that western North America and northwestern India had the two largest changes in groundwater level.
Over geologic time scales, such a slight drift can have a considerable impact, including dramatic effects on the overall climate of the planet as well as the balance of salt and freshwater. However, compared to the more immediate impacts of human-induced climate change, those time scales won’t keep most climate scientists up at night.What would keep them up is that this groundwater pumping is indeed contributing to an increase in sea level rise. Again, 6.
Understanding all these complex interactions is one of the main focal points of climate science, and this paper contributes a new viewpoint on that model. Solving water scarcity is a separate but interrelated problem that must be tackled if this problem if humanity doesn’t want to make this problem worse simply by taking what is needed to survive in some of the driest, most popular places on the Blue Dot.
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