The article “Rising Seas Slowed by Increasing Water on Land” talks about an innovation in one of NASA’s satellites, in which water storage on land is now able to be identified and quantified. This issue is directly related to the rate of sea level rise. With ice sheets and glaciers being melt in the past few years, the Earth has soaked about 3.2 trillion tons of water in soils. A consequence of that is the decrease of rising sea level in about 20%. It is said that the amount of water that has been soaked by Earth is equal to the volume of Lake Huron, which is the world’s seventh largest lake. This new innovation in NASA’s satellite also allows scientists to observe global patterns of changes in land water storage. It was possible to notice from this analysis that regions that are typically considered more wet, such as regions close to the equator, are getting even more wet, and dry regions are getting even more dry. These patterns are consistent with previous observations made by scientists of changing precipitation in oceans and land.

Scientists always believed that there was a big dependency of people on groundwater for irrigation and consumption. With that in mind, they thought that this would lead to a consequence of water being transferred from land to the ocean. With this new discovery in NASA’s satellite, scientists are now able to better understand variations in sea level change. It will also help in making long-term projections of sea level rise, which will help society as a whole get better prepared for further consequences.

Reference: http://climate.nasa.gov/news/2398/