»Die Seen weltweit verlieren zusammen im Durchschnitt 22 Milliarden Tonnen Wasser pro Jahr«

We identify widespread decline in global lake water storage (LWS) over the past 28 years. Over half (53 ± 2%) of the large lakes experienced significant water losses (p < 0.1). LWS loss prevails across major global regions including western Central Asia, the Middle East, western India, eastern China, northern and eastern Europe, Oceania, the conterminous United States, northern Canada, southern Africa, and most of South America. Roughly one-quarter (24%) of the large lakes experienced significant water gains, which are largely found in dam-construction hotbeds and in remote or underpopulated regions, such as the Inner Tibetan Plateau and the Northern Great Plains of North America. Globally, LWS showed a net decline at a rate of −21.51 ± 2.54 Gt year⁻¹, or by 602.28 km³ in accumulative volume—equivalent to the total water use in the US for the entire year of 2015 or 17 times the volume of Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. The accumulative volume loss in global LWS is about 40% larger than the mean of annual variations (i.e., differences between maximum and minimum values) in global LWS over the period 1992–2020, masking its importance to the water cycle and freshwater resources.

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