Climate Central: Parts of the Middle East are losing groundwater reserves at "an alarming rate,' according to a new analysis of NASA satellite data.
From the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2009, portions of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria that lie within the Tigris and Euphrates river basins shed 117 million acre-feet of water. That's roughly equivalent to the volume of the Dead Sea.
About one-fifth of that water disappeared during a drought that began in 2007, which decreased snowpack that feeds the rivers and...