Scientists have been talking for years about the climate crisis looming over the planet, and also keep repeating that human activities literally affect all systems of the planet. In a new study spanning nearly 20 years of observation, scientists have found that the planet's global water cycle is changing in an unprecedented way, writes PHYS. org.

According to study co-author Sujay Kumar, a research fellow at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, he and his colleagues found that human intervention in the planet's global water cycle is actually more significant than previously thought.. Most of the shifts scientists have seen are driven by activities such as agriculture, which scientists say could have an impact on ecosystems and water management, particularly in certain areas.

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These shifts described by scientists have implications for people around the world. According to the study's lead author, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientist Wanshu Ni, the water cycle was previously thought to fluctuate only within a certain range, but scientists now believe these shifts have consequences for people around the world.. At least this statement is true for some specific regions.

The study's authors hope their findings will serve as a roadmap for improving how scientists assess water resource variability, and will also influence how the global community plans for sustainable resource management, especially in areas where change is most noticeable..

One of the most striking examples of human impact on the water cycle is Northern China, which suffers from constant drought.. At the same time, vegetation in some select regions continues to thrive, in part because producers continue to irrigate the land. Pumping more and more water from the depths of the Earth. Such interrelated human interventions often result in complex effects on other water cycle variables such as evapotranspiration and runoff.

In the new work, Nee and his colleagues focused on three different types of shifts in the cycle:.

The team used data collected via remote sensing between 2003 and 2020 from several NASA satellite sources.

They also used products from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer satellite instrument to provide information on the health of vegetation. As a result, scientists were able to model continental water flows and reserves across the planet..

The study's findings suggest that Earth system models used to model the future global water cycle must evolve to integrate the current effects of human activities.

Previously, Focus wrote that a continental supply of water was found in the bowels of the Earth, but there is a problem: it is guarded by dormant volcanoes.