Water has power. So much power, in fact, that pumping Earth’s groundwater can change the planet’s tilt and rotation. It can also impact sea-level rise and other consequences of climate change. Pumping groundwater appears to have a greater consequence than ever previously thought. But now-thanks to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters-we can see that, in less than two decades, Earth has tilted 31. 5 inches as a result of pumping groundwater. This equates to . 24 inches of sea level rise. “Earth’s rotational pole actually changes a lot,” Ki-Weon Seo, a geophysicist at Seoul National University and study.