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The same NASA experts who sounded the alarm over the drought's threat to the food supply are now warning that California needs some 11 trillion gallons of water to replenish to normal levels."Recent rains are no reason to let up on our conservation efforts," Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board stated.
Eleven trillion gallons - that's the amount of water that NASA scientists say would be needed to replenish key California river basins in what they're calling the first-ever estimate of the water necessary to end an episode of drought. That 11 trillion gallons is the deficit in normal seasonal levels that NASA said a team found earlier this year in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins, using Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites. The GRACE data, presented Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, showed those river basins losing about 4 trillion gallons per year - more than state residents use annually, NASA said.
Comment: Superbomb winter storm predicted for Northeastern U.S. at Christmas