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North India's groundwater use raising sea levels by 5%
Source: The Times of India, New Delhi, Date: , 2009
The amount of groundwater pumped out by Delhiites and others across northern
India is highest in the world and is contributing as much as 5% to the total
rise in as 5% to the total rise in sea levels. A new study using satellite data
has found that the region a swathe of over 2,000km from west Pakistan to
Bangladesh along north India extracts a mindboggling 54 trillion litres from
the ground every year, a figure that's likely to cause serious concern over the
future of water availability. A new study using satellite data has found that
the region a swathe of over 2,000km from west Pakistan to Bangladesh along
north India extracts a mindboggling 54 trillion litres from the ground every
year, a figure that's likely to cause serious concern over the future of water
availability.
The study, conducted by Virendra Mani Tiwari from National Geophysical Research
Institute in Hyderabad, along with scientists from University of Colorado, US,
found that the average depletion of groundwater level in the Indian part of the
region was an alarming 10cm a year. "We found the region of maximum
groundwater loss centred around Delhi and included Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana
and west Uttar Pradesh," Tiwari told. Interestingly, the study found
significantly less groundwater exploitation in south India. It says, The
trends are considerably smaller than the negative trends in the north, and could
be due to a combination of increased reservoir impoundment, mis-modelled
naturally varying storage and (along the southeast coast) tectonic signals
related to the Dec 26, 2004 Sumatran earthquake.
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