(The) paper, published Thursday in the journal Science, finds that global warming has notably reduced the amount of water that’s being stored around the world in soil, lakes, rivers, snow and other places, with potentially irreversible impacts on agriculture and sea level rise. The researchers say the significant shift of water from land to the ocean is particularly worrisome for farming, and hope their work will strengthen efforts to reduce water overuse.

Earth’s soil moisture dropped by over 2,000 gigatons in roughly the last 20 years, the study says. For context, that’s more than twice Greenland’s ice loss from 2002 to 2006, the researchers noted. Meanwhile, the frequency of once-in-a-decade agricultural and ecological droughts has increased, global sea levels have risen and the Earth’s pole has shifted.

The study also confirms an explanation for a slight wobble in the rotation of the Earth — it’s being driven by the changing moisture levels of the planet.