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Apr 24, 2013 4:41 GMT
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Apr 4, 2013 11:57 GMT
Hydrology Group (Famiglietti)
The Middle East Lost a Dead Sea-Size Amount of Water in 7 Years
Posted from Amman, Jordan. This is the first in a series of posts on our water diplomacy trip to Israel, Jordan and Palestine. Other posts in the series: 2) Parallel Worlds: Water Management in Israel and California, by UCCHM Policy Fellow Kate Voss; 3) Information about the original publication of this news story.
Massive loss of fresh water in Middle East revealed
A team of scientists at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) went through data gathered by NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission between January 2003 and December 2009.
They estimate that there was approximately 143.6 Km3 less fresh water after the 7 years — an amount almost equivalent to the volume of the Dead Sea, publishing their findings in the journal Water Resources Research1.
NASA study find that Middle East's Water is Dissappearing Fast
A Dead Sea's worth of water has disappeared from the Middle East. It sounds like something out of Carmen Sandiego, but it's actually the finding of a joint study by scientists from NASA, the University of California, Irvine, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, published today in the journal Water Resources Research.
Water crisis as much about management as nature
The global water debacle is just as much a water management crisis as it is a naturally occurring issue, experts in the field agreed on Wednesday.
Water professionals had gathered to discuss the reasons behind the world’s ever-dwindling water supply on Wednesday afternoon during a panel discussion at Tel Aviv University prior to Israel’s first screening of the film Last Call at the Oasis.
Water and the Slippery Slope to Conflict in the Middle East
Experts are drawing a connection between an important natural resource and tensions in the Middle East. In this case, it's water, not oil.
In an arid region, the availability of fresh water from rivers, lakes, and aquifers is crucial for agriculture. If the water runs out, it costs people their livelihood and it could even create a catalyst for a popular uprising against an oppressive regime. Middle East experts say water scarcity is playing at least some role in the Arab Spring upheaval.
Less fertile crescent
THE Middle East is arid. But it is also home to some of the world’s most fertile rivers, such as the Nile. So it is all the more alarming that one of its great river basins, the Tigris-Euphrates—which flows through the so-called fertile crescent that gave birth to agriculture itself—is getting drier. According to a study in Water Resources Research, an American scientific journal, between 2003 and 2009 the region that stretches from eastern Turkey to western Iran lost 144 cubic kilometres of fresh water.
Satellite Tracking of Middle East Aquifers Points to the End of ‘Data Denial’ -New York Times
The Coming Water Wars? CNN
Imagine a large body of water – about the size of the Dead Sea – simply disappearing. It sounds like a science fiction movie. But it’s not. It’s happening in real life – and we've only just found out.
Does Central Valley irrigation boost the Southwest's rainfall?
Irrigation in California’s Central Valley pours so much water vapor into the atmosphere that it significantly drives up summer rainfall and runoff in the Southwest, according to a new study.