The Earth is losing over 300 billion cubic metres of freshwater annually.
“The world is using and losing more freshwater every year as people, farms, and cities all demand more.
Drawing on satellite measurements and global economic data, a new report from the World Bank finds that Earth is losing roughly 324 billion cubic meters of freshwater annually. (This is equivalent to over 500 Sydney Harbours in volume.)
That volume could meet the yearly water needs of around 280 million people, so each year of loss locks in more risk for communities that already live close to the edge.” –https://www.earth.com/news/how-earth-loses-324-billion-cubic-meters-of-freshwater-yearly/
For a wonderful summary of the World Bank report, watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Liw96w05LkY&t=320s
The Y -axis above is in billions of cubic metres.
Our continents are drying. Why?
It is all to do with groundwater which makes up 99% of all liquid fresh water. Most of the time, all the water that flows in streams and rivers is groundwater. It’s called base flow. All wetlands are fed by groundwater, and most ecology that’s water-related has a groundwater feed.
Our continents are drying because we are changing the land surface so that groundwater recharge is reduced while we use more and more groundwater. We build our cities and towns so that instead of seeping into the ground, water speeds over concrete and bitumen into the sea. We build giant reservoirs and millions of little dams designed to stop water seeping into the ground and water is wasted to evaporation. We chop down forests and fill in wetlands. We bare the soil and water rushes across the landscape. Water from irrigation is lost to the atmosphere.
” About half the people in the world drink groundwater to some degree or another. And 40% of the food these days is produced by irrigation, but 70% of the irrigation water is groundwater.”- John Cherry in an interview with Alpha Lo of the Climate Water Project: https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/the-big-groundwater-crisis-food-water
There is a global water crisis caused by the depletion of aquifers around the world. We forget that water is an important greenhouse gas helping to make our world hotter. Low soil moisture leads to a greater need for irrigation and so the cycle further leads to more aquifer depletion. More and more water ends up in the oceans. Depleting water levels and increasing temperature work together to reduce agricultural yields and lead to famine.
Social consequences
Around the world, large parts of northern India, Central America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East are already in drying basins where both demand and aquifer depletion are climbing together.
In Sub Saharan Africa, the World Bank report links drought driven water shortages to job losses for roughly 600,000 to 900,000 people each year, especially in rural farming communities and among women and older workers.
The mass migration to the cities in Syria because of water shortages, caused civil unrest and worse.
Iran is in severe trouble. In the past year, the country’s average annual rainfall has dropped to 45 percent below normal, and nineteen of its thirty-one provinces are in a severe drought. The dams and reservoirs that supply the capital have dried up and are operating at minimal capacity, with some at only 5 percent of reserve capacity. (Google AI summary from carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2025/11/iran-water-crisis-warning-climate?)
“Faced with a perfect storm of weather woes and decades of mismanagement, Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian issued a warning to his country that the situation could deteriorate even further.
“We’ve run short of water. If it doesn’t rain, we in Tehran … must start rationing,” he said.
“Even if we do ration and it still does not rain, then we will have no water at all.
“They [citizens] must evacuate Tehran.” There are 15 million people living in Tehran: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-24/iran-facing-worst-drought-in-60-years/106035210
Wildfires, Biodiversity
Continental drying also fuels more frequent and severe wildfires, especially in forests and grasslands that used to stay moist for most of the year.
The World Bank report estimates that a modest increase in the rate of freshwater depletion can raise the likelihood of wildfires by more than a quarter, and by about half in biodiversity hotspots where species are already under pressure.
As water tables fall and rivers shrink, ecosystems lose the steady flows they need to keep species alive.
Wetlands can turn into dry plains, fish populations can crash, and soils can degrade, which makes recovery harder even if rain eventually returns.
Land Use Decisions are a Key Driver of Continental Drying
The figure below shows effect of land use change on ground water resources, defined as TWS (terrestrial water storage).
Note: This figure illustrates the estimated impact of a 1 percent change in the respective land use type in 2002 (equivalent to approximately 25 km2 on average) on the grid cell’s TWS trend from 2003 to 2024, with barren land serving as the baseline. “Other natural vegetation” includes grasslands, savannas, and shrublands. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals. TWS = terrestrial water storage.
What About Australia?
We are already a dry land but so far, the Great Dividing Range has kept our main population centres watered and fed. However, our current obsession with removing forest, particularly on the mountain ridges, may become a step too far. This could result in a drier continent but when it rains flooding will increase. Our major cities are placed next the Pacific Ocean. As we build further and further west, the remaining patches of forest that attract rain inland may no longer so effective. This may result in rainfall reduction further inland as theorized by the Biotic Pump concept – perhaps a discussion for a future blog?
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