Earth’s storage of soil, lakes and river water is decreasing. And that’s especially bad for agriculture

Dongliyor Ryu, a hydrology professor at the University of Melbourne, and his collaborator, Ki Waong So, were on a train visiting Ryu’s family when they found something amazing. After stopping by the station due to technical issues, SEO pulled out the computer to spend some time in some work when the results were displayed on data that RYU barely incredible.

“At first I thought, ‘That’s a model error,'” Ryu said.

A year after the check, they decided that was not the case.

Their paper, published Thursday in Journal Science, found that global warming could significantly reduce the amount of water stored in soil, lakes, rivers, snow and more around the world, and could have an irreversible effect on agriculture and sea level rise. Researchers say the significant shift in water from land to sea is particularly worrying for agriculture, and they hope that their work will intensify efforts to reduce overuse of water.

The study shows that Earth’s soil moisture has reduced by around 2,000 gigatons over the past 20 years. For context, it more than doubled the loss of Greenland’s ice from 2002 to 2006, researchers noted. Meanwhile, the frequency of one agriculture and ecological drought increased, rising global sea levels and changing the Earth’s poles.

Ryu and his colleagues used three different data sources to ensure that the Earth is less stored on land than it used to be. He also said their results reveal deeper truths about the land, and that some farmers must frequently compete. When a large, dramatic rain event comes after a drought, sometimes leading to huge floods, it does not mean that underground water has recovered.

“It appears the land has lost its elasticity to restore its previous levels,” he said.

Whether that resilience will return depends on whether humans take action against climate change and significantly alter their water use, researchers say. An increased heat stress in plants means that more water is needed. Agriculture, particularly irrigated agriculture, continues to lift more water than it can afford. And humans continue to release greenhouse gases without any powerful efforts to reverse course.

“There are long-term climate changes that have happened in the past and there are likely future events that could reverse the trends that were explained, but perhaps not our lifetime,” said Katherine Jacobs, professor of environmental science at the University of Arizona, who was not involved in the study. “Greenhouse gases continue to cause global warming in the future, so the rate of evaporation and evaporation is unlikely to decrease immediately.”

This study also confirms the explanation of slight wobbling in Earth’s rotation. It is driven by changes in the planet’s moisture levels.

“When I read this I was very excited,” said Lewis Samaniego, professor of hydrology and data science at the University of Potsdam, who wrote an outline commentary discussing the findings of science. “This is an intriguing puzzle of all areas that came at the right moment to verify what’s impossible so far.”

However, Samaniego emphasized that the discovery is not only unattractive. It’s a wake-up call. Imagine the planet’s wobble like the Earth’s ECG, he said. Looking at this result is like detecting arrhythmia.

Choose not to listen to your doctor. “That’s what we’re playing with at the moment,” he said.

©2025 Associated Press. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. This material will not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.