London-SANA

More than half of the world's lakes and large bodies of water have been drying up since the early nineties, mainly due to climate change, a new study shows, fueling concerns about the availability of water for drinking, agriculture and electricity generation.

Reuters quoted a team of international researchers as saying that some of the world's most important freshwater sources, stretching from the Caspian Sea between Europe and Asia to Lake Titicaca in South America, have lost water at a cumulative rate of about 22 gigatons per year over about three decades, and that rate is equal to 17 times the volume of water in Lake Mead, the largest natural reservoir in the United States.

Fang Fang Yao, a specialist in surface water science at the University of Virginia and leader of the research team that prepared the study, published in the journal Science, said that 56 percent of the decline in natural lake water is due to global warming and human consumption, but increasing temperatures have the largest share.

Climate scientists generally believe that arid regions of the world will become drier under climate change, and that those full of water will increase the proportion of water in them, but the study concluded that water is severely lost in wet areas.

The scientists estimated the area of about 53,1992 huge lakes using satellite measurements, as well as climate models and hydrology, and the result of their research was that unsustainable human consumption, changes in rainfall, water wastage, sedimentation and rising temperatures all led to a decrease in lake water levels globally, and this occurred in 2020 percent of lakes from <> to <>.

The study also revealed that unsustainable human consumption is causing drying up seas and lakes such as the Aral Sea in Central Asia and the Dead Sea in the Middle East, while lakes in Afghanistan, Egypt and Mongolia have been affected by rising temperatures that can increase water evaporation.

Water levels have risen in a quarter of the lakes, often as a result of dams being built in remote areas such as the Inner Tibetan Plateau.

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