Audio: Professor Alfredo Huate, from the University of Technology Sydney, says data collected from a NASA satellite is telling experts about groundwater levels (ABC Rural)

Data collected over time indicated water levels of the Great Artesian Basin were declining, but it is not the same story for Central Australia’s Amadeus Basin.

Professor Alfredo Huate, from the University of Technology Sydney, said the groundwater measurements were a great outcome, but that it all happened by accident.

“The GRACE satellites were launched by NASA in 2002 and the concept behind the mission was to measure, for the first time, gravitational waves emanating from the earth’s surface,” he said.

“Gravity changes as the weight or the mass of the things on the planet change.

“The idea was that the gravity is greater when you go into the Himalayas or mountain ranges and becomes less so when there is less mass on earth.

“The unexpected consequence of this mission is that people started discovering month to month changes in mass that were totally unexplained,” he said.

“They were not of the nature of big continental mountain range type changes; the mountains don’t change that quickly.”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-21/satellite-accidently-measures-australian-underground-water/6635626

So you would think that the massive amount of tonnes of oil being pulled out of the middle east deserts would show up as well, yeah.

Peak Warming Man said:

So you would think that the massive amount of tonnes of oil being pulled out of the middle east deserts would show up as well, yeah.

That’s not scanned as otherwise we’d realise how much/little oil is left

Would it be possible to “surf” gravity waves? If it were possible, I expect the “Surf board” and wet suit would be quite different to the equipment used on our oceans.

> “The GRACE satellites were launched by NASA in 2002 and the concept behind the mission was to measure, for the first time, gravitational waves emanating from the earth’s surface,” he said.

No! The concept behind GRACE was to measure the strength of gravity and so determine the “figure of the earth”. Gravitational waves had nothing to do with it.

This is the important bit:

“The unexpected consequence of this mission is that people started discovering month to month changes in mass … From 2002 until 2008 there was a statistically significant decline in the groundwater, but in 2009 and until the end of 2011 the total water has almost doubled from what it was before the satellite went up in 2002.”

That tallies with the water levels in reservoirs around Australia over the same timescale. Water levels dropped significantly during the dry tears 2002 to 2008 and have rebounded since then.

bob(from black rock) said:

Would it be possible to “surf” gravity waves? If it were possible, I expect the “Surf board” and wet suit would be quite different to the equipment used on our oceans.

“Gravity waves” or “gravitational waves”? See wikipedia for the difference. Water waves that are are gravity waves, so can be surfed. Gravitational waves can’t, and even if they could then you’d need a surfboard thousands of km long.