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<p>In addition to the continuous increase of groundwater temperatures due to global warming, heat losses from infrastructure, (underground) buildings and geothermal use lead to thermal anomalies on regional to local scales. Often, these local heat accumulations (hot spots) of groundwater temperatures are associated with underground car parks (UCP). They represent sizeable infrastructures that are typical for densely built-up areas and are numerous in many cities. Unlike regular basements, they often reach beneath the groundwater table and heat up due to frequent traffic. They therefore act as heat sources for groundwater. By analysing long-time data from 31 sites in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, we discovered seasonally varying heat flux intensities and even directions. While all UCPs heat the groundwater during the warm period, most UCPs cool the groundwater in the cold period. Only few act as continuous heat source all year round. We also discuss characteristics and their influence on the temperature such as the type of use (public/private) and the depth of the UCP. Furthermore, we present the results of a spatial analysis of heat fluxes and flows from over 5000 UCPs in Berlin, Germany. By discussing the range of heat fluxes and the hydrogeological conditions that lead to regional differences, we demonstrate the role of UCPs for subsurface urban warming. The results show that about 40 % of Berlin’s total heat flow from UCPs occurs in the “Mitte” district, where the density of UCPs is highest and the distance to the groundwater table is typically below 4 m. Finally, the knowledge gained about subsurface heat sources can help improve urban thermal groundwater management and highlights the potential for recovering waste heat from UCPs through geothermal applications.</p>

<p>Heat loss from buildings, infrastructure and enhanced heat flow from sealed surfaces increase the temperatures of shallow groundwater often more than global warming. A worldwide analysis of thousands of wells reveals that the temperature at every second location is higher than expected, and local anthropogenic heat sources that exist for decades contribute to subsurface waste heat accumulation down to a depth of around 100 m. At some places, such as in the city centre of Cologne, heating of groundwater by several degrees of Celsius appears to have even reached a maximum. Here, long-term temperature records reveal stabilizing thermal conditions in the shallow aquifer. This also means that the geothermal potential has increased significantly, possibly to a critical level for maximum stored heat in place. Still, the natural geothermal resources together with the artificially stored resources are often overlooked. In many regions, recycling only the energy lost to the subsurface could (1) fulfil a substantial part of the heat demand of buildings, and (2) increase the efficiency of heat pumps with a more favourable thermal regime during the heating period. This resource is growing.  On the global scale, by the end of this century nearly 75% of the heat demand could be covered by recycling the heat that accumulates in the subsurface from anthropogenic heat loss and in response to climate change. Especially in densely populated areas, continued heat accumulation mitigates the risk of overexploiting the geothermal potential of shallow aquifers. Sustainable thermal management of aquifers must integrate concepts of heat recycling to avoid long-term warming of groundwater. For this, integrated spatial planning is needed. Shallow geothermal systems such as groundwater heat-pump installations have to be spatially organized in urban districts to achieve optimal use of the geothermal resource. They can maintain controlled cooling of the groundwater while benefitting from enhanced waste heat flux. As an example, we discuss the thermal interference of urban infrastructure and geothermal wells for the city of Lyon, which are spatially arranged based on hydraulic and thermal criteria to benefit from urban groundwater heating.</p>

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<p>Under natural conditions the thermal signature at the Earth´s surface equilibrates with the geothermal heat flux. Given that downward propagation of heat by conduction and advection is magnitudes lower than the daily and seasonal variation at the surface, these short-phased patterns impart a dampened and long-phased temperature response in the shallow subsurface. While climate change manifests in temperature trends that correlate at decade scale this signature is integrated by the slow heat transfer in gradual subsurface warming. In many places land use and small scale anthropogenic structures overprint the thermal response of the subsurface to climate change at the surface. In our contribution we present evidence of subsurface warming in natural and anthropogenic settings for different case studies in Central Europe. Repeated temperature depth logs reveal that in natural environments shallow subsurface temperature rise is trailing when compared to the rise in surface temperature and diminishes towards greater depths (e.g. +0.35 K per decate at the surface, +0.28 at 20 m, and +0.09 at 60 m below ground level for 32 wells in Bavaria). While in general a coherent pattern is found for different locations in natural environments, site-specific trends have a high spread (e.g. +0.36±0.44 K per decade for 227 wells in Austria) and temperature can also be dependent on vertical or lateral groundwater flow in the region. In built-up areas temperature rise in the subsurface is characterised by a higher variance and often exceeds the rise of surface temperature. Especially in dense urban areas ground temperature is elevated indicating local extreme temperature rises that are magnitudes higher than temperature rise at the surface. The high variance originates partially from the scarcity of reliable and long-term monitoring. Monitoring data typically lacks either depth or time resolution as temperature is either continously logged at a single-depth, erratically measured as depth profile, or measured at the surface during groundwater quality measurements.</p>