Dear RG memebers
Is the effect of climate change on groundwater visible and can it be quantified?
It seems that the effect of human activity ( deforestation, overexploitation of groundwater, irrigational activity, etc ) ate easly observable and can be quantified than the effect of climate change on groundwater. What is your idea and research experiances on it?
Thanks
Climate change is changing the distribution and intensity of rainfall. This affects groundwater recharge and extraction, both of which are measurable.
Dear Emmanuel V Murray
Thank you for your reply. Groundwater is stored in pore spaces recharged for thousands of years but climate change is obsereved with in few decades. Do you think that recent recharges can affect specialy deep aquifers ?
Thanks
Dear Mulugeta Chanie Fenta , as an editor at IWA Journal of Water & Climate Change (JWCC) we receive many manuscripts on the climate change affecting ground water topic. In most of these manuscripts the research doesn't contain evidence climate change influences ground water. E.g. extreme value analysis of long year time series rainfall deficit. In most cases it's the effect of human activity that seems normative to the pressure on ground water resources, risk of landslides (flash floods) and increasing soil subsidence (sinking of cities). To find the evidence you are looking for, you must isolate the rainfall - ground water recharge relation, preferably based on a long year time series. At least 30 years - the classical period as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Climate change will affect groundwater in many different ways. It is possible that as temperature increases, more groundwater will dry up. The opposite will happen when more rain is recieved than normal. There will be land inundation, and so underwater sources will lost their sources. Saltwater intrusion maybe possible when sea level rises, affecting groundwater sources in the low lying places.
Since groundwater is recharged from rainfall, this means that anything that affects rainfall will affect groundwater. So there will be more drying of shallow wells as opposed to deep wells.
Dear Nanco Dolman
Thank you very much and I agree to your explanations.
Thank tou
The climate change specially ,if it goes to warming,without any doubt has a Negative effect not only on groundwater quantity ,but also its quality.I won't be focus at reducing of ground water resources rapidly, i'd like to mention some point refering to the quality of Gw. BY climate warming due to increasing evaporation at soul surface, the capilarity process strongly increased ,which as a result caused chemical change at Gw component.Because the bringing salt to surface goes to changing water Quality and also soil Contimanation....
Dear Jan Aqa Abdul Satar
Thanks for nice explanation. Is there any refernces or research work for that? This is because of when we think about its effect on GW, we have to ignore or consider other factots too. This makes it to be very complicated. I think Nanco Dolman's way of veiw is interesting.
Thanks
There are no signs in average or extreme changes in rainfall correlating with the very faint climate warming since late 1800. Changes in GW would react more to changes in greening due to the major impact from evapotranspiration ET, where Earth as a whole is getting greener but some major rain forests are shrinking, the latter very important for global ET. But GW such as other climate change crisis are creations of fantasy profitable for some but very expensive for the rest of us.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Geoscience
- Atmospheric Sciences
- Climate Science
- Climate Change