Abstract
<jats:p> Climate change and rising human water demand are intensifying water scarcity across arid Asia, but their relative contributions to terrestrial water storage (TWS) decline in endorheic basins remain poorly quantified. Using satellite gravity observations from GRACE and GRACE‑FO, which measure changes in TWS, we show that TWS anomalies across Asian endorheic basins decreased by 64.26 ± 2.43 Gt yr <jats:sup>−1</jats:sup> during 2002–2023. Multi-dataset attribution for 2002-2021 reveals that while climate-driven changes account for roughly half of the total TWS decline (−29.41 Gt yr⁻¹), increasing human water demand severely exacerbates both the rate and magnitude of this depletion. Human water use accounts for 38.0 ± 4.55% (−21.30 Gt yr⁻¹) of the total TWS loss, primarily through irrigation and groundwater abstraction. Depletion is spatially heterogeneous, with faster losses near human activity centres and in drier areas with greater irrigation demand. Current global hydrological models substantially underestimate the observed magnitude of TWS depletion and fail to reproduce these spatial hotspots. Our results demonstrate that localized human water demand is driving severe basin-scale water depletion, underscoring the urgent need for a policy shift from supply-side infrastructure to transboundary demand management to avert irreversible ecological and societal collapse across Earth's fragile drylands. </jats:p>