NASA alert: Middle East loses freshwater reserves size of Dead Sea in 7 years
Thousands
of wells have been dug in the extremely arid region. (Reuters / Ali
Jarekji)
RT,
13
February, 2013
The
Middle East is headed towards a water shortage crisis, as NASA
satellites show that reserves the size of the Dead Sea have been
depleted in just seven years, largely due to well-drilling.
Newly-obtained
results show that 144 cubic kilometres of freshwater – a volume
nearly equivalent to that of the Dead Sea or Lake Tahoe – had been
removed from the ground in the area that encompasses Turkey, Iran,
Iraq and Syria between 2003 and 2009.
"That's
enough water to meet the needs of tens of millions to more than a
hundred million people in the region each year, depending on regional
water use standards and availability," said
Jay Famiglietti, the UC Irvine professor who led the team who made
the findings, which are due to be published on Friday in Water
Resources Reasearch magazine.
While
40 percent of the decline is in the soil and surface water, the
decrease in groundwater, caused by human actions, is responsible for
90 cubic kilometers of the shortfall.
"Satellite
data shows an alarming rate of decrease in total water storage in the
Tigris and Euphrates river basins, which currently have the second
fastest rate of groundwater storage loss on Earth, after India," said
Famiglietti.
The
study was made possible by the US space agency’s Gravity Recovery
and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites. The two identical vessels
measure miniscule changes in the planet’s gravity through the
variations in distance between them as they circle the Earth;
postions influenced by the varying mass of the water reserves.
The
research team said the depletion was caused by poor water management,
combined with unfavorable climate conditions.
Iraqi women carry non-potable water back home through a sand storm in theoutskirts of Basra.(Reuters / Yannis Behrakis)
A
devastating 2007 drought in the area not only caused depletions of
surface water, which have still not been compensated, but also forced
Iraqi authorities to order the drilling of more than 1,000 water
wells. The actual number of wells drilled is likely to be much
higher, as official statistics in the region are often patchy.
"That
decline in stream flow put a lot of pressure on northern Iraq," said
Kate Voss, another study author, "Both
the UN and anecdotal reports from area residents note that once
stream flow declined, this northern region of Iraq had to switch to
groundwater.”
At
the time, the country was at the height of a deadly sectarian
conflict.
“In
an already fragile social, economic and political environment, this
did not help the situation," said
Voss.
Iraqi children scramble for water at a collection point, overseen by British troops from the Black Watch and the Desert Rats, in Basra in southern Iraq.(Reuters / STR)
Last
year’s authoritative
Global Water Security report,
produced by US intelligence agencies, marked the Middle East,
naturally the driest region in the world alongside North Africa, as
the area most vulnerable to water shortages, saying the situation was
exacerbated by a lack of legal agreements and political instability.
"They
just do not have that much water to begin with, and they're in a part
of the world that will be experiencing less rainfall with climate
change," Famiglietti
said. "Those
dry areas are getting dryer. Demand for freshwater continues to rise,
and the region does not coordinate its water management because of
different interpretations of international laws.”
Turkey,
whose territory houses the headwaters of the region’s two major
rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, enjoys a strained relationship with
Syria and Iraq, the countries further downstream, and has
systematically diverted water for its irrigation, which is frequently
inefficient (throughout the Middle East).
Meanwhile,
the World Bank predicts that water demand in the region will rise by
60 percent by 2045.
Groundwater
has made up the shortage so far but it is being extracted at much
faster rates than it is replaced.
"Groundwater
is like your savings account," said
Matt Rodell, another study author, "It's
okay to draw it down when you need it, but if it's not replenished,
eventually it will be gone."
A view shows the bank of the Tigris river during a sandstorm in Baghdad.(Reuters / Mohammed Ameen)
Residents collect water from a stream in a town in Diwaniya province, 150 km (93 miles) south of Baghdad.(REUTERS/Imad al-Khozai)
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