Freshwater Losses In The Middle East

  • Released Tuesday, February 12, 2013
View full credits

The visualization shows variations in total water storage from normal, in millimeters, in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins, as measured by NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, from January 2003 through December 2009. Reds represent drier conditions, while blues represent wetter conditions. The effects of the seasons are evident, as is the major drought that hit the region in 2007. The majority of the water lost was due to reductions in groundwater caused by human activities. By periodically measuring gravity regionally, GRACE tells scientists how much water storage changes over time.

GRACE Groundwater Depletion

GRACE Groundwater Depletion — No Dates or Colorbar

Dates

Colorbar

Colorbar

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Tuesday, February 12, 2013.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, October 9, 2024 at 12:03 AM EDT.

Missions

This page is related to the following missions:

Datasets used

Note: While we identify the data sets used on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.