A couple of points.<p>(1) I work with the lead author of the study you mention (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;science.sciencemag.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;351&#x2F;6274&#x2F;699.full" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;science.sciencemag.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;351&#x2F;6274&#x2F;699.full</a>).  It is absurd to say that the timing of his work has to do with the election cycle.  He&#x27;s been working on establishing the size of the groundwater component of hydrological mass balance for at least the past year.  I believe the take-away from that article is that groundwater storage has to be taken into account in the next IPCC report, or else we will see missing water and we won&#x27;t know why.<p>(2) The study you cite found that some water, that would have otherwise appeared as a sea level rise, is being sequestered as groundwater.  The study in the OP said that sea level rise is higher than expected, apparently due to anthropogenic warming.  These do not conflict, it&#x27;s just further information about what&#x27;s going on.  Note also that the OP vs. the article you cite have vastly different time scales (millennia vs. decade) and consequently different precision (cm vs mm).<p>(3) These studies show we&#x27;re learning more, because we have a lot of new observational capabilities now (like GRACE, which for the first time measures groundwater mass by its effect on Earth&#x27;s gravity field).  We&#x27;ll continue to see new studies that establish the sizes of the dominant mass flows as we&#x27;re able to learn more.