Satellite data reveals impact of warming on global water cycle

Jun 3, 2021

Climate change is having an increasing effect on the water cycle. Image: Unsplash/Marc Zimmer

Ayesha Tandon

Science Journalist, Carbon Brief

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image of concept art depicting NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE mission) Twin Satellites

NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE mission) Twin Satellites, concept art Image: NASA PO.DAAC.

charts showing how evapotranspiration, precipitation, discharge and change in ground water storage have varied over 2003-19

Timeseries for evapotranspiration (top), precipitation (second from top), discharge (second from bottom) and change in ground water storage (bottom) over 2003-19. The black line shows the average trend and the shading shows the confidence range, where red regions indicate a high confidence Image: Pascolini-Campbell et al (2021).

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