Ongoing drought-induced uplift in the western United States

| October 8, 2014 | Leave a Comment

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Date of Publication: September 26, 2014

Year of Publication: 2014

Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science

Author(s): Adrian Antal Borsa, Duncan CArr Agnew, Daniel R. Cayan

Journal: Science

Volume: 345:6204

Pages: 1587-1590

ABSTRACT: The western United States has been experiencing severe drought since 2013. The solid earth response to the accompanying loss of surface and near-surface water mass should be a broad region of uplift. We use seasonally adjusted time series from continuously operating global positioning system stations to measure this uplift, which we invert to estimate mass loss. The median uplift is 5 millimeters (mm), with values up to 15 mm in California’s mountains. The associated pattern of mass loss, ranging up to 50 centimeters (cm) of water equivalent, is consistent with observed decreases in precipitation and streamflow. We estimate the total deficit to be ~240 gigatons, equivalent to a 10-cm layer of water over the entire region, or the annual mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet.

 

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