Water Storage on Earth in 2007

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment-Continuity mission will extend a decades-long record of following shifting water masses using gravity measurements.

This immersive experience leverages satellite data to illustrate how climate change is impacting Earth’s water cycle.

Early data shows the greatest net gain of water over the winter in nearly 22 years, but the state’s groundwater levels still suffer from the effects of years of drought.

Scientists have predicted that droughts and floods will become more frequent and severe as our planet warms and climate changes, but detecting this on regional and continental scales has proven difficult. Now a new NASA-led study confirms that major droughts and pluvials – periods of excessive precipitation and water storage on land – have indeed been occurring more often.

In a recent study, scientists found that a previously unmeasured source – water percolating through soil and fractured rock below California’s Sierra Nevada mountains – delivers an average of 4 million acre feet (5 cubic kilometers) of water to the state’s Central Valley each year. This underground source accounts for about 10% of all the water that enters this highly productive farmland each year from every source (including river inflows and precipitation).

Researchers have untangled puzzling patterns of sinking and rising land to pin down the underground locations where water is being pumped for irrigation.