A stunning new study from NASA highlights the impact humans are having on fresh water availability across the globe.

The study, published earlier this week, found that Earth's wetlands are getting wetter and dry regions are getting drier, due to human water management, climate change and natural cycles.

"What we are witnessing is major hydrologic change," said co-author Jay Famiglietti, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement.

"We see a distinctive pattern of the wetland areas of the world getting wetter – those are the high latitudes and the tropics – and the dry areas in between getting dryer. Embedded within the dry areas we see multiple hotspots resulting from groundwater depletion."

NORTHEAST STORMS WERE POWERFUL ENOUGH TO GENERATE 'METEOTSUNAMI' ALONG COAST

A team of researchers led by NASA's Matt Rodell trekked across the globe, looking at trends in 34 regions and using 14 years worth of data.

They pulled in satellite precipitation data from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project, NASA/U.S. Geological Survey Landsat imagery, irrigation maps, and published reports of human activities related to agriculture, mining and reservoir operations, according to the statement.

The study was published in the scientific journal Nature.

Rodell noted in the statement this is the first time they've been able to see that freshwater availability is changing on the planet.

In the study's abstract, the authors noted that the trends had been lacking the proper investigation and attribution, including in areas in northwest China and and Okavango Delta.

"This observation-based assessment of how the world’s water landscape is responding to human impacts and climate variations provides a blueprint for evaluating and predicting emerging threats to water and food security," the abstract reads.

Rodell added that a key goal of the study was to determine what shifts were caused by natural occurrences, including wet and dry periods on the planet, associated with El Niño and La Niña, and those caused by humans, including tasks such as "pumping groundwater out of an aquifer faster than it is replenished."

WHAT IF THE OCEAN'S CLIMATE-CONTROLLING 'CONVEY BELT' CAME TO A HALT?

Freshwater is defined as water found in lakes, rivers, soil, snow, groundwater and ice. The shifting of availability of freshwater from ice is especially noteworthy, given the loss from ice sheets at both the North and South Poles has implications for sea levels rising.

Famiglietti said that while the melting of ice and alpine glaciers is clearly caused by climate change, there is more work to do to see why the other changes in freshwater availability are occurring.

"The pattern of wet-getting-wetter, dry-getting-drier during the rest of the 21st century is predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change models, but we’ll need a much longer dataset to be able to definitively say whether climate change is responsible for the emergence of any similar pattern in the GRACE data," he added.

The GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) mission was a joint mission between NASA and the German Aerospace Center to watch the world's water. It is being followed up with GRACE Follow-On, a joint mission between NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ).

It's uncertain at this point whether it's possible to reverse the effects of climate change, though scientists and researchers are certainly trying.

GREENLAND IS LITERALLY CRACKING APART AND FLOODING THE WORLD

Earlier this week, a team of geneticists laid out plans to comingle the permafrost-preserved DNA of a Woolly Mammoth with that of an Asian elephant to increase the elephant's tolerance to cold weather.

Cities are also taking up the task of trying to combat climate change.

In Los Angeles, for example, officials are painting streets white to reduce the effect of urban "heat islands" and combat the effects of climate change.

Follow Chris Ciaccia on Twitter @Chris_Ciaccia

MIAMI –  A couple of spacewalking veterans floated outside the International Space Station Tuesday morning for the first of two planned spacewalks. NASA Flight Engineers Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold emerged from the airlock at about 7:30 a.m. EST for a planned six-hour spacewalk. The day’s task: Moving a component called a Pump Flow Control Subassembly, or PFCS in space shorthand.

That component drives and controls the flow of ammonia through the station’s outdoor cooling system. And with six people living up there, 250 miles above Earth, no one wants all of those components and electronics overheating.

Robotics engineers who are not spacewalking are also involved in the mission. They’re controlling the big Canadarm2 and the Dextre robotic arm to place the PFCS on a truss for further testing.

For Feustel, this is the eighth spacewalk of his career. For Arnold, it’s his fourth.

It also happens to be the fiftieth spacewalk in the International Space Station program’s history.

This Sunday, anyone living in the region from Boston to Charleston will have a sky-watching opportunity to go outside and look up, and—weather permitting—see the next cargo trip heading up from Earth. At 5:04 a.m. EST, Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket will blast off from NASA’s Wallops, Virginia launch site, bringing up more than “7000 pounds of science and research to the space station in support of dozens of research investigations, as well as crew supplies and hardware,” NASA said.

That includes the components needed for the second of the spacewalks, happening in June.

The same astronauts, Feustal and Arnold, will again do the “outdoor work,” installing high-definition cameras on the Harmony module, which will make it easier for the future commercial crew vehicles to align with the international docking adapter.

Boeing and SpaceX are still planning to fly astronauts up to the space station later this year, with both aerospace companies aiming for their first test flights—flying up empty to prove they’re safe and sound—in August.

By next year, NASA will no longer have to rely on paying the Russian space program for $70 million a seat rides up into space.

Amid all the commencement ceremonies taking place at colleges across the country, one particular commemoration on Friday featured a guest who was literally out of this world.

Purdue University granted NASA astronaut and alumnus Andrew J. “Drew” Feustel an honorary doctorate during its spring commencement ceremonies, which was connected live to the International Space Station as it circled about 250 miles above Earth.

“Boilermakers are known for making Giant Leaps for the benefit of humankind, from Neil Armstrong’s historic first step on the moon to today’s plant scientists helping feed the world’s growing population," Purdue University President Mitch Daniels said in a news release. "Drew Feustel’s courage on behalf of our nation as he works to make the next Giant Leap in space science and exploration gives us all much to be proud of."

While a Purdue dean typically places a ceremonial hood on honorary degree recipients, fellow alum and NASA astronaut Scott Tingle, who is also stationed on the ISS, had to stand in and place the hood on Feustel due to obvious logistical challenges.

“For me, after community college, there was no other choice but Purdue, the only university I applied to, hoping and now knowing that that decision would change my life and set me on a path to the stars,” Feustel told graduates.

SPACEX SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES SATELLITE WITH NEW UPGRADED 'BLOCK 5' FALCON 9 ROCKET

Feustel, who earned a bachelor’s degree in solid earth sciences in 1989 and a master’s degree in geophysics from Purdue in 1991, has spent 80 days in space, including 51 days on his third mission. The Purdue alum is a veteran of three NASA spaceflights, and is currently assigned aboard the ISS until October.

"As the adventure unfolds, I hope you look back on Purdue the way I do, with fond memories of the good and challenging times," Feustel said. "You have earned your right to walk the stage and I wish you all the chance to fly among the stars professionally and for some of you, personally."

Purdue has graduated 24 NASA astronauts and, by the end of 2018, Purdue astronauts will have spent the equivalent of more than 1,100 days in space.

HOUSTON –  Imagine flying from New York to Los Angeles, normally a six-hour ordeal, in under three hours. NASA is hoping that will one day be a reality as it works to prove that quiet supersonic commercial travel is possible.

The agency will be conducting a series of flights in November off the shores of Galveston, Texas, an island city outside of Houston. It’s a test to determine how to best study people’s reactions to quiet supersonic jets.
 
“This project, QSF 18, is a test so we can test the methodology for future community response testing for projects like the LBFD,” said Larry Cliatt, principal investigator for NASA.
 
LBFD is NASA’s low boom flight demonstrator—a supersonic aircraft that reduces the sound of the sonic boom. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company is working with NASA on its design. With low boom flights, NASA said it “intends to gather data on how effective quiet supersonic technology is in terms of public acceptance.”

The Federal Aviation Administration generally prohibits supersonic flight over land.

A commercial high-speed jet, the Concorde, was popular in the late 1970s and 1980s, but its booming sound and exorbitant operating and ticket costs forced the British-French airliner to shut down in 2003. The loud boom that came with breaking the sound barrier was often described as “unsettling.”

With the LBFD, NASA hopes to reduce the sound of the sonic boom to a gentle thump, similar to the sound of a neighbor closing a car door or thunder rumbling in the distance—that is, if anyone hears the sounds at all.
 
But because the LBFD won’t be completed until 2021, NASA is simulating the sounds for now. For the tests in Galveston, an F-18 plane will conduct a dive maneuver offshore, diving 49,000 feet, briefly going supersonic and producing the sound likely to come from the LBFD.

“It’s extremely exciting, and I expect the Galveston people will be excited, as well,” said Cliatt.
 
Several people say they are looking forward to the new technology, which has been in the works for several years.
 
“What NASA is doing is a step in the right direction,” said George Abbey, senior fellow in space policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute.
 
“If I could fly supersonic transport, I could reduce that [travel] time,” Abbey said. “Time is really money, and spending a short time on an airplane vs. a long time, I’d prefer taking the short time.”