Anyone want to hazard a back of the envelope guesstimate as to how many acre-feet, or hectares, or gallons might be stored on "dry land" in seven billion people?
Someone's not taking their fluid pills!
If it were all dumped into the ocean, it would probably be like pouring a bucket of water into a swimming pool. If every human on Earth were to be tossed into the ocean, I doubt it would make much difference in the water levels.
The headline is very confusing with regard to the article. They added up what they thought were sources for MORE water in the oceans, but those sources (heat expansion and melting ice) did not account for all of the INCREASE of water in the oceans. So where did this EXTRA water in the ocean come from? (So the source was unknown - or “missing”)
It would seem to make sense that groundwater “locked” in the soils for hundreds of thousands of years that is pumped to the surface, used to irrigate our fields and sustain life, and then once used either goes back into the soils, evaporates, or is flushed down the drain into the rivers and oceans will, obviously, have an impact of an increase in ocean water levels.
Development of the world into a livable and useful place often includes homes and buildings, paved driveways and roads, airports, and all sorts of other useful facilities that prevents the rain water from entering the soil, so more rain water is runoff. Finding it’s way to the nearest catch basin, culvert, creek, river and ocean.
Amazing to me that such an obvious conclusion is such a big deal to them. I wonder what other HUGE SURPRISES those that do the Global Warming modelling don’t realize to put in?
“Hey Earl - I’m wondering if we should leave a line of code open and maybe put something in there about the sun or something?”