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Groundwater pumping to increase food production causes persistent groundwater drought in India

Rapid groundwater depletion in India is a sustainability challenge. However, the crucial role of climate and groundwater pumping on persisting groundwater drought remains unrecognized. Using the data from Gravity recovery climate experiment (GRACE) satellites and more than 5000 observational wells, here we show that the increase in precipitation in northwest India (NWI) no longer helps to recover from groundwater drought that started after 2012. Groundwater storage anomaly (GWSA) from the GRACE well observations is strongly linked with accumulated precipitation for 153, 105, and 18 months for NWI, northcentral (NCI), and south India (SI). Precipitation and GWSA have decoupled in NWI after 2012 indicating the higher influence of groundwater pumping for crop production than climate. The relative contribution of vegetation growth (R2=0.26) on GWSA is higher than precipitation (R2=0.02) for 2002-2016 in NWI than in NCI and SI. Our findings highlight the urgent need of reducing groundwater pumping in India.