GPS Discovers the West Is So Dry, It's Rising

The West is so dry it's risung, according to scientists. "There's not enough water to weigh the mountains down..........." WHAT?

California's mountains are rising. Like an uncoiled spring, they have moved up by more than half an inch (15 millimeters), thanks to the absence of water to weigh them down, according to a new study in the journal Science. Initially, the Global Positioning System (GPS) stations that discovered this fact were meant to study earthquakes. Researchers noticed something strange, however, when they looked at the data: The stations were rising across the West by an average of 0.15 of an inch (4 millimeters) and even more in the mountains. This "uplift" effect was a consequence of the historic drought hitting California and nearby areas, researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego said. How much water is missing from the ground? Nearly 63 trillion gallons, which is equal to a four-inch pool of water spread across the surface of the entire Western United States.

www.nbcnews.com...

a reply to: lostbook

Well, tell all the warming believers to go stand on that mountain before it rises anymore!

a reply to: VoidHawk

What?

a reply to: Domo1
Tell all the warming believers to go stand on that mountain before it rises !

a reply to: MrMaybeNot

What?

a reply to: MrMaybeNot

I thought that's what he was going for but I'm still confused how this in anyway refutes global warming.

a reply to: lostbook

Maybe they were rising before the invention of GPS. Really no way to know that.

Wouldn't it be a hoot if GPS somehow caused it to rise?

(Schrödinger's Mountain)

Humans are now responsible for the rise in a mountain range? Seriously? What the hell is going on when a human can be responsible for the rise of something like a mountain range, the RISE, not the fall, but the RISE. Honestly, the end cannot come soon enough, the inmates run the asylum.

I'm sorry, but this makes no sense to me. I was never good at science, but land rising because of a lack of water underneath it doesn't make sense. And the mountains rising for the same reason makes even less.

Water has substance right? If water is underneath something else of substance, like the earth, and the water goes away then the earth will lower because of gravity. Right? When a sponge loses water it shrinks. Right? Seriously, someone set me straight with this.

Know what I think? I think there are pranksters out there raising those stations just enough to freak pepole out. That's what I think.

a reply to: DeepImpactX
The earth crust is very flexible, the water is/was in the ground not underneath it.

In this case it's the weight of the water that weighs down the crust of earth, when that weight of water is gone the flexibility of the earth crust will make it rise and the magma underneath the crust will push it up.

I'm just surprised it haven't caused any earthquakes as that seems to be a lot of movement in an already tense earthquake area.

a reply to: DeepImpactX

Hmm, My thoughts are that when things are heavy, from water, they have a certain amount of gravity pulling them down. Weight/gravity relationship. When the items have less water, they weigh less, so there is less gravity holding them down. Thus the rise of said items! Make sense? I hope so, cause now even I am confused. LOL!!!

Yeah, I am a little confused too but I think what is meant by "water weighing the mountain down..." is actually sub-duction by the weight of snow/ ice on the mountains. I may not have worded this right by my use of the word "sub-duction" but what I'm trying to get at is I think that in the article they are saying that the ice/ snow "weighs"' the mountains down, and with global warming melting the ice/ snow there is nothing to weigh the mountains down..

a reply to: Mianeye

Sorry . I was writing when you posted your reply.
You have a good description/answer of his query!
I guess mine kinda goes along with yours though, eh?

Expanding earth, anyone?

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest


Well there ya go! and that would make sense in this case, eh?

Perhaps they are just wrong about the mechanism. I have noticed that some types of soil in the desert south west will compact when wet, even though you would assume that the extra material should mean extra volume. I dont know that i've ever seen it grow again when it dries out exactly (in fact the opposite most places, you get the hexagon silt tiles of dry lake beds- but then again the way those compact in an specific way does curl them up at the edges).

And land really can be compressed and bounce back, but I do find it a little shocking that its really THAT much weight difference.

Yet another thing comes to mind now that I think about it... the faults. What would happen if you had a rubber band with ridges on it, and you stretched it? The ridges would lower and stretch. If you released tension they would rise again. This could be a cyclic property of the Basin and Range province owing to its many faults and whatever the hell is going on beneath the continental plate that caused this weird geography to begin with (if I recall my community college survey courses correctly, one theory is that the continental plate here overrode it's oceanic trench and perhaps part of a now extinct plate that was being subducted in that trench, thus stretching and deforming continental crust as it rode over).

a reply to: SyxPak

I think our planet is filling up with new water. What happens to all that ionized hydrogen that is ejected from the sun, when it hits us? I think the magnestosphere captures some of it, channels it to our core via the poles, where it then neutralizes and forms various compounds including water. The earth quakes are the result of slow expansion. As the sun goes crazy, the earth inflates faster, and therefore earthquakes become more frequent and violent.

One day, the earth will pop like it did in Noah's day, only I believe fire will be the new flood.

a reply to: Mianeye

That makes sense, but somewhere along the line doesn't something that has been displaced have to be replaced by something else? You can't just have an empty void can you?

a reply to: SyxPak

That makes sense too. I never looked at it that way. I guess what I'm not understanding is how gravity works below the surfce.