LOS ANGELES — For more than two decades, satellites have tracked the total amounts of water held in glaciers, ice sheets, lakes, rivers, soil and the world’s vast natural reservoirs underground — aquifers. An extensive global analysis of that data now reveals fresh water is rapidly disappearing beneath much of humanity’s feet, and large swaths of the Earth are drying out.

Scientists are seeing “mega-drying” regions that are immense and expanding — one stretching from the western United States through Mexico to Central America, and another from Morocco to France, across the entire Middle East to northern China. ×

This page requires Javascript.

Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. kAm%96C6 2C6 EH@ AC:>2CJ 42FD6D

See Full Page