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.

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.

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.