| Воду выпили индусы. |
[Aug. 18th, 2009|03:31 pm] |
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The number "is big," says hydrologist James Famiglietti of the University of California, Irvine—big as in 54 cubic kilometers of groundwater lost per year from the world's most intensively irrigated region hosting 600 million people. "I don't think anybody knew how quickly it was being depleted over that large an area," Famiglietti says.
The big picture of Indian groundwater comes from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission, launched in March 2002 as a joint effort by NASA and the German Aerospace Center. Actually two satellites orbiting in tandem 220 kilometers apart, GRACE measures subtle variations in the pull of Earth's gravity by using microwaves to precisely gauge the changing distance between the two spacecraft.
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Adjusted for natural variations due to changing precipitation and evaporation, the decline in gravity that GRACE determined equates to a net loss of 54 ± 9 cubic kilometers of groundwater per year, the group reports. That would produce a fall in the water table of about 10 centimeters per year averaged over the entire region.
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Still, across the subcontinent, no one knows how far down the water goes. They just know, as Famiglietti notes, that "it's not bottomless."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/325/5942/798
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- Сказал, что миру настанет конец.
- Он не сказал, когда именно ? |
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