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> Globally, natural lake volume declined at a net rate of −26.38 ± 1.59 Gt year

the phrase you read said "Over half (53 ± 2%) of the large lakes experienced significant water losses" (emphasis mine)

Is 26.38 Gt a lot?

There's 91k cubic kilometers of fresh water in lakes according to: https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/sci...

And a cubic kilometer is basically a Gt, right? .98 Gt?

So 26 / 91,000 = ~0.02% ?

Is that a lot? If it's really 0.02% - wouldn't you expect something to be random noise? How do we know it's not random noise?

But they measure close to 30 years (1992-2020), which means its close to 0.6% which is a significant number

Is it? Maybe it's an error, or maybe there's more water in ice pack, glaciers, snow, underground, or even in the ocean.

Like, it's unclear if there's a problem here or not.