Water is a valuable resource that is becoming increasingly scarce due to droughts and heat waves. New analyses of satellite data show a significant decline in water reserves in Europe. Even though water reserves in Germany will have recovered slightly by 2023, billions of tons of water will still be missing.
According to a recent report by the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), Germany continues to experience a significant shortage of water in its total water reserves. Since measurements began in 2002, Europe has lost a total of around 100 billion tons of water.
The GFZ emphasizes that despite its supposed availability, water has already become a scarce and valuable resource in many regions of the world. Germany has also experienced extreme droughts in the last five years.
A team led by Eva Börgens and Christoph Dahle from the GFZ analyzed data from the Grace-Follow-On satellite duo, which monitors the global water balance using gravity field measurements. For Germany, the data shows that the water reservoir will have stabilized somewhat by 2023, but there will still be a shortfall of around ten billion tons of water compared to long-term averages. By way of comparison, Lake Constance holds around 48 billion tons of water.
Terrestrial water storage, also known as TWS, consists of various components: glacier ice, snow, soil moisture, groundwater, and water in rivers, lakes, and artificial reservoirs.
According to the GFZ, the situation is particularly critical in Greenland and Antarctica. Every year, Greenland loses around 224 billion tons of ice, while Antarctica, although colder, still loses around 138 billion tons of ice annually.
The GFZ offers additional information, animations, and maps via the portal "globalwaterstorage.info," which show how water reserves have been steadily declining since 2002. An animated time series impressively illustrates the decline in water storage in Europe.