Groundwater Extraction: Excessive Use Causing North Pole Drift, Sea Level Rise

New York

Excessive groundwater extraction and use in North India and North American countries for irrigation is causing the drift of Earth’s North Pole by 4.36 cm per year as well as global sea level rise.

The new findings on sea level rise and the North Pole tilting as a significant contributor have been unraveled by South Korea’s Seoul National University geophysicist Ki-Weon Seo and his team.

The research has been published in Geophysical Research Letter in which Seo has concluded that excessive groundwater extraction has resulted in the North Pole drifting.

The Earth’s North Pole is drifting towards Russia’s Novaya Zemlya Islands or ‘64.16°E at a speed of 4.36 cm per year from the year 1993-2010 due to groundwater exploitation’.

This has also led to a global sea level rise by 6.24 mm during this period and the inclusion of groundwater effects has also been confirmed with Earth’s observations by various scientists, Seo concluded.

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Seo said earlier the sea level rise was attributed mainly to climate warming that caused polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers melting.

But Seo and his team studied the impact of groundwater exploitation as an important anthropogenic contribution to sea level rise due to its excessive use.

The Seoul National University Scientists have estimated that during 1993-2010, Earth lost more than 2 trillion tonnes of groundwater from reservoirs and aquifers.

Seo’s team which included Dongryeol Ryu, Joomyoung Eom, Taewhan Jeon, Jae-Seung Kim, Kookhyoun Youm, Jianli Chen and Clark R Wilson have made use of gravitational surveys for the study.