A new study shows California's mountains have risen by as much as 15 millimeters in the past year and a half due to a massive amount of water lost during a drought that began in 2012.

Researchers also confirmed this unexpected change is causing the land to uncoil like a spring. California's mountains are being pushed upwards, according to data gathered from GPS stations across the region, caused by this large-scale groundwater loss.

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Scientists have concluded they can now measure how much surface and groundwater was lost by how much the land rose as it dried during the prolonged drought.

A deficit of some 62 trillion gallons of water caused this uplift. This volume can cover the entire western United States under six inches of water. This water loss is also equal to the annual loss of mass in the Greenland Ice Sheet.

GPS sensors have recorded evidence of the massive land uplift that encompasses the entire tectonic plate on which the whole western U.S. sits. Some of California's mountains have risen 0.6 inches since 2013 but overall, the whole western US plate has risen 0.157 inches.

Scientists have noticed that all GPS stations within the National Science Foundation's Plate Boundary Observatory have moved upward since 2003 along with the timing of the drought.

The movement of the plates has become more and more extreme since last year's movement, said Duncan Agnew, professor at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who is a co-author of the study.

Agnew reveals the study shows new ways of how to measure the earth's movement by measuring the amount of groundwater loss during a drought season. He also confirms this movement has no effect whatsoever on the seismic risk in California's San Andreas Fault and will not produce earthquakes in the region.

The study was published in the journal, Science, by researchers from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

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