(Photo : Wikimedia Commons) As the Earth experiences rising
temperatures, a new NASA study utilizing NASA's twin Gravity
Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites found that
the Middle East has lost the water equivalent of the Dead Sea
over just seven years. NASA hopes that the study will prompt
people to recognize the harmful effects of quickly depleting
groundwater. "GRACE data show an alarming rate of decrease in
total water storage in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins,
which currently have the second fastest rate of groundwater
storage loss on Earth, after India," said Jay Famiglietti, lead
investigator of the study and a hydrologist and professor at UC
Irvine said in a NASA press release. NASA scientists found that
areas in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. lost 117 million acre
feet (144 cubic kilometers) of water from 2003-2010. It is
estimated that 60 percent of this loss was the result of pumping
from underground reservoirs "The rate was especially striking
after the 2007 drought. Meanwhile