California mountains are rising, by a small amount, due to the extreme drought taking place in the western United States, according to a new study.
University of California San Diego researchers, working in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the school, discovered landmasses in the western United States are rising.
Global positioning satellites were utilized to precisely measure the altitude of the ground, in an effort to study how they change. Investigators discovered much of the western United States has risen by 0.15 inch due to the water shortage. The effect was more pronounced around mountains in California, where the ground level climbed four times as much, 0.60 inch.
Adrian Borsa, a researcher at Scripps, was studying data from GPS stations around the west, when he noticed measured altitudes universally rose over the years 2013 and 2014.
The western drought is responsible for western lands missing out on 62 trillion gallons (240 billion tons) of precipitations. This amount of water is equivalent to a layer, six inches thick, spread over the entire western United States. This weight would normally press down on the ground. Without this mass holding it down, the ground has recoiled like an uncoiled spring.
Duncan Agnew, a specialist in tectonic plates and earthquakes at Scripps, believes the tectonic plate underlying the area has risen over the last year, unburdened by billions of tons of mass.
The water shortage in the western United States is roughly equivalent to the loss of ice from Greenland, due to global climate change.
Using similar techniques to the ones utilized in this study, researchers will be able to measure water loss in areas where direct measurements are not available. These new tools could represent a new method of research for geologists.
"These results quantify the amount of water mass lost in the past few years. It also represents a powerful new way to track water resources over a very large landscape... These results demonstrate that this technique can be used to study changes in fresh water stocks in other regions around the world, if they have a network of GPS sensors," Dan Cayan, a research meteorologist at Scripps, said.
This rise in the tectonic plate should not affect faults like those in the San Andreas, since the distance the ground has risen is so small. Therefore, Californians should not experience additional earthquakes as a result of the change in ground level, according to researchers.
Study of how the drought in the western United States is affecting the lands in the region was profiled in the journal Science.
