"This is probably the largest rate of groundwater loss in any comparable-sized region on Earth." that study said.
Now, thats chilling .
Its the last line of a latest news story on water woes on our Mother Earth. The focus is on India but coming from a study conducted by a non-Indian entity. Many affluent, educated Indians tend to arrogantly disregard any warnings given by Indian ecologists/environmentalists but do not mind being open to reading about the same coming from international groups. I know of a Editor-in-chief of a top business magazine in India who with unabashed arrogance criticises everything that is written by the head (who is Sunita Narain) of an Indian enviro
nmental group, Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.
Anyway, even as many urban and semi-urban Indians use water in an excessive, wasteful manner (see the pic alongside for one such wasteful use -- it is of a water park in Bombay, Water Kingdom, operated by a Zee Group company -- I took this pic in Dec '03 specially for a water story i wrote in a Bombay-based NGO's montly magazine), I am reproducing the news report in totality below and after that a summary of the original report in Nature magazine's latest issue.http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j3wYwMXHvL0heFLfcre8c_yy0tGwD9A1NK6G0 Study sees dramatic drop in Indian groundwater By TIM SULLIVAN (AP)
NEW DELHI — Excessive irrigation and the unrelenting thirst of tens of millions of people are causing groundwater levels in northern India to drop dramatically, a problem that could lead to severe water shortages, according to a study released Wednesday.
The study comes as India's struggles with water have become a major political issue. The problem reaches across the country's vast class divide, touching everyone from residents of elite neighborhoods where the taps regularly go dry to poor farmers in desperate need of irrigation to grow their crops.
Giving free electricity to farmers — who use that electricity to pump more groundwater — has become a common promise by campaigning politicians. That, though, simply makes the problem worse.
"This issue is of grave importance," said K. Sreelakshmi, a natural resource economist at New Delhi's Energy and Resources Institute, TERI. Sreelakshmi, who was not connected to the study, noted that previous research projects had revealed lowering groundwater, though this one used a new approach by relying on satellite data. "The question is what do we do about the problem," she said. "How do we recharge" India's dropping water table?
The study, led by Matthew Rodell of the United States' NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, indicated that groundwater across a swath of India from New Delhi into heavily farmed agricultural belts dropped at a rate of 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) per year between August 2002 and October 2008. That decrease in groundwater is more than double the capacity of India's largest reservoir.
The study noted that the drop in groundwater came in years where there was no shortage of rainfall to cause a natural decline. The region, though, has seen an enormous increase in water use since the 1960s. Part of that is because of the growing population, though even more resulted from the so-called Green Revolution, which dramatically increased India's agricultural production — in part by exponentially expanding the use of groundwater for irrigation.
"Severe groundwater depletion is occurring as a result of human consumption," the researchers concluded in the study, released online in the journal Nature.
The study was based largely on data provided by GRACE — the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment — a satellite system launched in 2002 by NASA and the German Aerospace Center. GRACE allows scientists to estimate changes in groundwater storage by measuring tiny variations in the Earth's gravitational pull.
Another recent study based on GRACE data, using results from a 1,200-mile (2,000-kilometer) swath across eastern Pakistan, northern India and into Bangladesh, showed about 1.9 million cubic feet (54 cubic kilometers) of groundwater lost per year.
That study, in Geophysical Research Letters, was led by geophysicists Virendra Tiwari of the National Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad, India; John Wahr of the University of Colorado, Boulder; and Sean Swenson of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.
"This is probably the largest rate of groundwater loss in any comparable-sized region on Earth," that study said.
On the Net: Nature magazine: http://www.nature.com/nature
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08238.html
Satellite-based estimates of groundwater depletion in India
Matthew Rodell1, Isabella Velicogna2,3,4 & James S. Famiglietti2
1. Hydrological Sciences Branch, Code 614.3, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA
2. Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, California 92697-3100, USA
3. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91109-8099, USA
4. Department of Physics, University of Udine, 208 Via delle Scienze, 33100 Udine, Italy
Correspondence to: Matthew Rodell1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to M.R. (Email: matthew.rodell@nasa.gov).
Groundwater is a primary source of fresh water in many parts of the world. Some regions are becoming overly dependent on it, consuming groundwater faster than it is naturally replenished and causing water tables to decline unremittingly1. Indirect evidence suggests that this is the case in northwest India2, but there has been no regional assessment of the rate of groundwater depletion. Here we use terrestrial water storage-change observations from the NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites3 and simulated soil-water variations from a data-integrating hydrological modelling system4 to show that groundwater is being depleted at a mean rate of 4.0 plusminus 1.0 cm yr-1 equivalent height of water (17.7 plusminus 4.5 km3 yr-1) over the Indian states of Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana (including Delhi).
During our study period of August 2002 to October 2008, groundwater depletion was equivalent to a net loss of 109 km3 of water, which is double the capacity of India's largest surface-water reservoir. Annual rainfall was close to normal throughout the period and we demonstrate that the other terrestrial water storage components (soil moisture, surface waters, snow, glaciers and biomass) did not contribute significantly to the observed decline in total water levels. Although our observational record is brief, the available evidence suggests that unsustainable consumption of groundwater for irrigation and other anthropogenic uses is likely to be the cause.
If measures are not taken soon to ensure sustainable groundwater usage, the consequences for the 114,000,000 residents of the region may include a reduction of agricultural output and shortages of potable water, leading to extensive socioeconomic stresses.
Consumers, industrialists, politicians and bureaucrats need to wake up urgently to the consequences of their excesses. The weather and climatic patterns that started changing more than a decade ago is intensifying by the year.
Here is the latest with regard to its impact on India:From:
Date: 2009/5/22
Subject: CSE press release this week: On the heat wave
To: rgajra@gmail.com
CSE Press Release… this week
Changing climate: what fanned the heat wave
In March-April this year, large swathes of India had been reeling under a searing heat wave. People were dropping dead, and rising temperatures were playing havoc with the air circulation patterns that control heat and cause rain
A frightening pattern has been emerging in all this -- there have been more heat waves and for a larger duration in this decade than in the previous two decades
A new report focuses on changing weather patterns and points out that the changes are happening much faster and outstripping all efforts to predict them
New Delhi, May 22, 2009: Disturbances in air patterns, different parts of the earth heating at different rates, and an early rise in temperatures were some of the reasons scientists in India held responsible for the bruising heat wave that had swept several states in India in March-April this year.
And what is even more disturbing is that these changes have been taking place “faster than scientists can predict” – says a latest report in Down To Earth, a fortnightly magazine that Centre for Science and Environment helps publish.
Unusual changes
In March-April, over 70 people reportedly died in Orissa due to sunstroke, with mercury soaring to 46 degree centigrade in April in some cities. The state’s health machinery was caught napping. In West Bengal, the heat wave killed nine. ‘Abnormal’ dry spells and dust storms swamped Guwahati in Assam, while the entire Malwa region in Madhya Pradesh reeled from a severe water stress.
What is wrong with the weather, asks the report. According to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), disturbances in the air circulation pattern over India led to mercury soaring across the country. Circulation of air helps distribute heat over the earth. The cyclonic storm, Bijli, which formed in the Bay of Bengal in mid-April, cut off the cool easterly winds blowing in from the Bay of Bengal. To add to it, an anticyclone hovering around Rajasthan blew hot winds from north–west to central and western India.
Some scientists have attributed the heat wave to an exceedingly dry winter, while others have pointed to the unusual heating of the Tibetan Plateau – which was two degrees warmer than normal in February this year.
The IMD also puts the lack of winter cyclones that form in Bay of Bengal and provide rains to the north-east, as a reason. The Down To Earth report quotes A K Srivastava, a scientist at the department’s Pune centre: “Tropical cyclones in the peak cyclone months of May and November have increased, while those occurring in the rest of the year have decreased.”
Warming – earlier, more frequent and more intense
An IMD study has compared the number, duration and spread of heat waves from 1971 to 2000 recorded in 35 sub-divisions across the country. The study says that on an average, almost 23 sub-divisions were hit by heat waves between 1991 and 2000, while 10 sub-divisions were hit in 1981-1990 and only about 7 were hit in 1971-1980.
The study also says that 25 sub-divisions went through more than 15 spells of heat waves in 1991-2000, compared to only two in the previous two decades. Notably, the decade 1991-2000 has been the warmest in the last 140 years.
Meteorological data shows that March and April have been warming faster in the last 100 years. The average temperature for March has increased by 0.76 degree centigrade over the last century; that for April has increased by 0.58 degree centigrade.
While governments sleep over these very visible trends, more intense and longer heat waves are taking a higher toll. Is climate change more imminent than thought of?
Resources
For more on the subject, see the latest Down To Earth cover story at http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover.asp?foldername=20090531&filename=news&sid=13&sec_id=9
For more details, or to speak with a climate change expert at CSE, please contact Shachi Chaturvedi at shachi@cseindia.org or on 98187 50007.
You can also speak with Dr D R Pattanaik, scientist, IMD-Delhi on 98683 97243, or write to him at drpattanaik@gmail.com; or with Dr M Rajeevan, scientist, National Atmospheric Research Laboratory, Tirupati on 08585-272016 or 272026, or write to him at rajeevan@narl.gov.in , rajeevan61@yahoo.co.in
I really enjoy commuting on Bombay's roads and suburban railways during national holidays. The sea of humanity is not there and its just a stream of humanity. Today is one such day, the 26th of January, a national holiday in India on account of it being the Republic Day (when the Constitution of India was formally adopted on this day in 1950).
Anyway, thats not the main thrust of this post. After having lip-smacking sambar with authentic dosas and idlis at Mani's Udipi hotel in Matunga Central (where I specially went today for a different but delicious breakfast), I decided to walk for a km before catching a taxi to go to my office that is 4-5 kms away from Matunga.
As I was walking in the inside lanes of Matunga-Dadar, I came across a small garden (see the image to the right). As I passed by it I was shocked (yes, such things still shock me because I do not care about those who say we should not be sensitive towards these things) to see trees fallen inside the garden. See the image below.
My heart goes to the trees of Bombay and all those other places in India and elsewhere where insenstive citizenry, bureacracy, politicos and corporates are mercilessly and cruelly hacking trees way in excess than required and all in the name of the much-abused word 'development'. This is not development. It is plain and simple murder.
Bombay gets electricity continuously 24 hours a day even during summer times except for some residential pockets in the suburbs. Power which would otherwise gone to non-Bombay areas of Maharashtra is diverted to Bombay to ensure this continuous supply as a result of which those areas encounter 5-15 hours power blackouts every day.
Bombay consumers, particularly the largest consumers which include shopping malls, movie theatres, hotels, corporate offices, ought to get into their heads that they should conserve the precious electricity that is bestowed upon Bombay. But the ground reality is ugly. Most of these big consumers disregard the importance of conservation.
For instance, yesterday, I had gone to attend a conference at ITC Grand Central Hotel at Parel (10 kms north of the southernmost tip of Bombay) and I noticed some sheer criminal wastage of electricity.
It was just 6 pm, and since its summertime in Bombay now there is very good daylight till 7.30 pm, and yet the hotel lobby whose windows are near the open space outside, was lit by a large number of bulbs. I clicked a photo of the lit lobby from my camera phone. In the photo, notice the lit chandeliers with 5-6 bulbs in each plus embedded bulbs on the roof and at the far end of the photo as well as on the right side of the photo you see bright light coming in from the windows from the natural sun-lit day outside. I think the hotel must be keeping these lights on throughout the daytime too.
There was worse. In the toilet I saw two TV screens next to each other above the urinals. These were on and playing a business channel. Now, what's more important? A Bombay hotel visitor watching news when he urinates? Or a non-Bombay consumer having electricity to switch on light in his toilet during night? The Maharashtra state government bodies and the Bombay Municipal Corporation which directly or indirectly regulate these hotels and other big power consumers turn a blind eye to such criminal wastage of electricity. Its disgraceful.
This part was added on 12 Oct 2008:
Two months back, on 12 August 2008, I came across another example of mindless use of electricity. See the pic alongside. I clicked it in the men's toilet of PVR movie theatre at Oberoi Mall in Goregaon East. There are three TV screens (the ones showing orange-coloured visuals) visible here but there were 3-4 more.
nmental group, Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment. 
