Despite high levels of anticipated sea level rise, a result of the accelerated melting of glaciers and ice sheets due to climate change, NASA scientists are finding that hot, parched Earth is actually soaking up water before it flows out into the oceans.
According to Tech Times, a new study by NASA involved satellite examination of factors that could be influencing the Earth’s rising sea level. What they found was that Earth’s continents have absorbed and stored an additional 3.2 trillion tons of water in lakes, soils, and underground aquifers.
Researchers from NASA say that the rate of sea level rise has been temporarily slowed by 20 percent.
John Reager, lead author of the study and a hydrologist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that the continents behave a little like sponges during their part of the water cycle.
The water cycle involves the evaporation of moisture over the oceans to the fall of precipitation, which puts the water in landmasses in the form of rivers and lakes, with this water eventually ending up back in the ocean. Continents go through 6 trillion tons of snow, soil moisture, groundwater and surface water during a cycle.
Water cycles vary, however, whether simply naturally as a result of the Earth’s own processes, or in a way induced by human activity.
In recent years, the average rate of sea level rise was 2.9 millimeters per year. As a result of this absorption of water, however, the sea level rise has been reduced by 0.71 millimeters annually.
However, this interesting development appears as if it is not going to last.
“We can’t compete with the Earth’s system. It’s just so huge. Some years are wet, some years are dry. You wait long enough and the climate wins,” said Alex Gardner, a JPL glaciologist.