Scientists from the University of Melbourne and their colleagues have identified a significant decrease in the volume of fresh water on land and underground, The Insider wrote on March 28, 2025.
According to research by hydrology professor Doonghyoel Ryu and his co-author Ki-Won, published in Science journal, global warming has significantly reduced the amount of water in soil, lakes, rivers, and snow cover — a change that could have irreversible consequences for agriculture and rising sea levels.
According to the study, over the past 20 years, soil moisture on Earth has decreased by more than 2,000 gigatons, which is twice the ice loss in Greenland from 2002 to 2006. At the same time, the frequency of major droughts — which previously occurred only once a decade — has increased, global sea levels have risen, and the Earth's poles have shifted.
Doonghyoel Ryu also notes that their results reveal a deeper issue: when heavy rains occur after droughts and cause flooding, groundwater reserves still do not recover due to reduced soil elasticity. Whether they return will depend on whether humanity takes action to combat climate change and fundamentally changes its approach to water resource usage.
The study also confirms that slight variations in Earth’s rotation are caused by changes in the planet’s moisture levels.
Luis Samaniego, a professor of hydrology and data science at the University of Potsdam, who wrote a review commentary on these findings in Science, compared the planet's wobble to an electrocardiogram of the Earth. According to him, detecting such a result is similar to identifying arrhythmia, and ignoring it is like not following a doctor’s orders when diagnosed with an actual heart rhythm disorder.
Earlier, it was reported that the U.S. would once again withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. This decision places Washington alongside Iran, Libya, and Yemen — the only countries in the world that have not signed the 2015 agreement in which governments committed to limiting global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
