Terrestrial water storage capacity is declining fast and is hardly getting any attention

I read some disturbing research over the weekend about the rapidly declining terrestrial water storage (TWS) that is now becoming a global issue with drying regions linking up to form mega-drying areas that will be nearly impossible to reverse. While global warming gets a lot of attention in the media the surface water issue is not very well understood by the population, although it augurs devastation. I am working on a project at present that is focusing on new land use forms for the production of food and construction materials. The TWS problem is a central consideration in that it is being driven by poor land management and hopelessly inefficient and damaging agricultural practices, particularly those involved in producing animal protein. There are solutions but tell the next Greenie you meet tucking into some meat product that they have to stop eating that form of protein and see the reaction. That will tell you about how difficult it will be for societies to adapt and change.

As I flew into Melbourne today from the North, the flight goes over – Lake Eildon – which is about 150 kms north east of Melbourne.

It supplies “about 60% of the water used in the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District” which is a major fruit and vegetable growing district in Victoria, Australia.

I am normally deep into some book at this stage of the flight so it was by perchance that I looked out the window just at the moment we passed over the Lake.

Even though I fly this route almost every week I was shocked to see how low the water level is at present – about 58.6 per cent as at September 14, 2025.

I took this photo from the plane.

If you visit this – Google Maps – page you will see what it looks like when there is more water.

This graph compares the water storage volume in the Lake over several years.

This year is looking very bad by comparison.

And it was rather a clustering of similar disturbing information this weekend because on Sunday I read this ABS news article (September 14, 2025)- Perth had its wettest winter in 30 years. Why aren’t its dams full? – and late last week, I read this scientific research report from the Science Advances journal – Unprecedented continental drying, shrinking freshwater availability, and increasing land contributions to sea level rise (published July 25, 2025) which seemed to focus on a similar theme that is not very well highlighted in all the discussions about global warming.

The ABC news report noted that:

Despite 2025 being the city’s wettest winter since — with nearly as much rain — the Mundaring weir on the outskirts of Western Australia’s capital is barely half full, as are many across the city.

This dam supply much of the drinking water to the capital of Western Australia, Perth.

This pictorial comparison of Mundaring Weir (on the West coast) over time from NASA’s Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 service is similar to what I saw over Lake Eildon (which is on the East coast) staring out the window and comparing today with the Google Maps image the link above takes to you.

Note that the Winter rain in 1996 and 2025 around the Lake Mundaring district was “almost identical”, which led the journalist to ask “where has all the water gone?”

The ABC article shows how in this “corner of the planet” the “climate … has changed significantly” and provides a series of graphs to demonstrate the point.

Two salient facts are that:

1. Rainfall is now lower in this area – “WA’s South West, where Perth lies, is drying out at a globally significant rate — having faced a 15-20 per cent reduction in its rainfall since the 1970s.”

2. Summers are becoming much hotter.

And the run-off of the reduced rainfall that goes into the water storage systems that provide our drinking water – so-called ‘streamflow’ – has fallen by:

… a whopping 80 per cent over the past 50 years.

This graph demonstrates the problem.

The increased temperatures and duration of the hot periods have also mean that the “catchments are like a big sponge” osaksing up the rain before it can run off into the dams.

Evaporation rates are also rising.

On top of that is population growth – increasing the demand for the water resources – and it is no surprise that Perth’s groundwater levels have “fallen by up to 10 metres”.

Now, we could dismiss this as a local regional problem for one corner of Australia.

The problem is that:

Streamflow has declined across the majority of southern Australia, and globally, regions like Iran, South Africa, California, and south-west Europe are facing similar challenges …

Currently, 25 countries are experiencing extreme water stress, which is the ratio of water demand to renewable supply.

The worst hit are the nations with “a Mediterranean climate”.

So we need some hardcore scientific research to tap into to learn more and it was a coincidence that on Friday I read this article in the established Science Advances journal – Unprecedented continental drying, shrinking freshwater availability, and increasing land contributions to sea level rise (published July 25, 2025).

Science Advances “is the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) open access multidisciplinary journal, publishing impactful research papers and reviews in any area of science, in both disciplinary-specific and broad, interdisciplinary areas”.

I expect it to come under attack from the crazy Right including the President any time now because it provides solid scientific knowledge to the broader community.

Anyway, the article cited above is a shocking statement of how far we are down the road to desertification and food chaos.

The authors are from a range of academic and scientific institutions spread across the globe.

They provide a recent assessment of the state of “Changes in terrestrial water storage (TWS)” which:

… are a critical indicator of freshwater availability.

Over the last quarter of a century or so, they find that “continents have undergone unprecedented TWS loss” which has created:

“mega-drying” regions across the Northern Hemisphere.

This loss of TWS (“all of the ice, snow, surface water, canopy water, soil moisture, and groundwater stored on land”) is just one of the indicators of significant and damaging climate change.

Other indicators include:

1. “global temperatures continue to reach record heights”.

2. “the planet is experiencing increasing extremes of flooding and drought”.

3. “widespread glacial and ice sheet melt and sea level rise”.

4. “greater risk of wildfire … and biodiversity loss”.

The research found that:

1. “the continents (all land excluding Greenland and Antarctica) have undergone unprecedented rates of drying and that the continental areas experiencing drying are increasing by about twice the size of the State of California each year.”

2. “while most of the world’s dry areas continue to get drier and its wet areas continue to get wetter, dry areas are drying at a faster rate than wet areas are wetting.”

3. “the area experiencing drying has increased, while the area experiencing wetting has decreased.”

4. “A critical, major development has been the interconnection of several regional drying patterns and previously identified hot spots for TWS loss to form four continental-scale mega-drying regions, all located in the Northern Hemisphere.”

Many of these regions are major food production areas.

The implications of this loss of TWS and the connecting up of drying regions in these maga-drying regions is not often mentioned in the mainstream media.

The authors don’t mince words:

The implications of continental drying for freshwater availability are potentially staggering. Nearly 6 billion people, roughly 75% of world’s population in 2020, live in the 101 countries that have been losing freshwater over the past 22 years.

The research suggests that:

Key contributors to the expansion of drying regions, declining TWS, and shrinking freshwater supply include melting GICs, the increasing severity of drought, the decreasing surface water availability, and groundwater depletion and all are continuing.

GICs are glaciers and ice caps.

The drying does not appear to be ephemeral – the authors say that it is “robust” showing “little sensitivity to a lengthening” data time frame.

It appears that 2014 marked a turning point with “the dry and wet extremes” changing location and that:

… it is clear that increasing extremes of drought, in both areas, location and duration, are driving the growth of previously identified hot spots or drying regions, into interconnected, continental-scale mega-drying regions, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere.

Why has it been happening?

The authors find that “overpumping groundwater is the largest contributor to rates of TWS decline in drying regions, significantly amplifying the impacts of increasing temperature, aridification, and extreme drought events” – that is, poor water management and poor farming practices, which not only impacts on yield but threatens the overall food security.

The current generations are depleting TWS because there is no cost to future generations taken into account when setting the current price of water.

Further excessive clearing for animal protein production is massively destructive and unsustainable.

Humanity will not be able to continue consuming meat-based protein for much longer and should stop now.

The problems that are arising from the loss of TWS are global and widespread.

Starvation in Africa.

Shipping disruptions in the Panama Canal.

Global sugar prices soaring.

Olive farms in Spain depleted and driving up prices.

Soon enough we will see the tensions that arise when the growing number of environmental refugees seek new home in which to survive.

I am guessing the powerful nations will turn a blind eye to that problem in the same way that global leaders are ignoring the massive slaughter and genocide going on daily in the Gaza Strip, which is km by km being razed to the ground by private contractors who follow in the wake of the bommbings and killing.

Humanity has a way of ignoring history and anything that doesn’t immediately impact.

The problem is that we might be able to look the other way and watch episodes of ‘Big Brother’ just a few kms from where young children are being blown to smithereens by IDF armaments, but the impacts of the climate shock is starting to affect all of us.

On the IDF behaviour – this UK Guardian article is pretty depressing (September 14, 2025) – How to burst the Israeli bubble.

Conclusion

There are immediate solutions to this problem.

Less irrigation, abandon consumption of meat products, build better energy efficient houses to reduce the heating stress in colder climates, and more.

I predict most people will wait for the catastrophe before any significant change occurs.

That is enough for today!

(c) Copyright 2025 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.