So much power, in fact, that pumping Earth’s groundwater can change the planet’s tilt and rotation. 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. “Earth’s rotational pole actually changes a lot,” Ki-Weon Seo, a geophysicist at Seoul National University and study lead, says in a statement. In the study, researchers modeled observed changes in the drift of Earth’s rotational pole and the movement of water.