They estimated that freshwater reserves in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins have declined rapidly in the last decade, with a total loss of 144 sq. km. - almost the volume of the Dead Sea! The study, published in the journal Water Resources Research, attributed 60 per cent of the loss to the pumping of groundwater from underground reservoirs, although the quantity of water that was lost was estimated to be enough to supply up to a hundred million people annually in the region, depending on regional water use standards.
Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist and professor at UC Irvine said, “The Middle East does not have that much water to begin with and it's a part of the world that will be experiencing less rainfall with climate change... The Middle East and the world's other arid regions need to manage available water resources as best they can." http://climate.nasa.gov/news/862.
Source: Sanctuary Asia.
