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Opinion: America Should Harvest a Trillion Gallons of Rainwater

Over the weekend, Burning Man attendees were forced to shelter in place when the usually-parched Black Rock Desert got roughly 3 months’ worth of rain in 24 hours. In August, Tropical Storm Hilary dropped as much rain on some inland areas of Southern California in a single day as they would typically receive in an entire year. In an age of Western megadroughts and dangerous decimation of groundwater throughout the country, recent storms underscore the importance of investing in the capacity to manage, collect, and store water.

Scientists Confirm Global Floods and Droughts Worsened by Climate Change

The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Water. These aren’t merely tough weather events, they are leading to extremes such as crop failure, infrastructure damage and even humanitarian crises.

The big picture on water comes from data from a pair of satellites known as GRACE, or Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, that were used to measure changes in Earth’s water storage — the sum of all the water on and in the land, including groundwater, surface water, ice, and snow.