Global‐scale assessment of groundwater depletion and related groundwater abstractions: Combining hydrological modeling with information from well observations and GRACE satellites

Döll, Petra; Schmied, Hannes Müller; Schuh, Carina; Portmann, Felix T.; Eicker, Annette

doi:10.1002/2014wr015595

Cited by 641 publications

(594 citation statements)

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“…Globally, around half of pumped groundwater for irrigation is used by plants, whereas the remainder possibly flows to the ocean as runoff causing SLR; evaporates into the atmosphere increasing water vapour content; returns back to the aquifers through groundwater recharge; or affects the atmospheric circulation owing to surface energy modifications and changes the precipitation intensity or pattern locally, regionally and globally 9,27,28 . In this study, we used the state-of-the-art fully coupled NCAR CESM 11 version 1.0.3 to simulate the fate of water pumped from groundwater and calculate the relative proportion of GWD to the sea-level changes.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The previous work suggests that a rapid increase in the contribution of GWD to SLR has occurred in recent decades (0.31-0.57 mm yr −1 ) [7][8][9] . An increasing contribution from land waters to SLR is in fact noted in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC AR5) 4 ; however, the uncertainty remains substantially large.…”

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confidence: 98%

“…Thus, this volume-based estimate does not account for regional variability in the relationship between GWD and abstraction 26 worldwide, and can be applied only to limited global regions and aquifers where the estimates can be verified by observed well data. Combining hydrological modelling with information from well observations and GRACE satellites, one study 9 found a rapid increase in global GWD after 1960 and estimated the global GWD contribution to SLR to be 0.31 mm yr −1 during 2000-2009. Another study 10 used an integrated water resources assessment model to estimate the sea-level change caused by all changes in terrestrial water storage (mainly GWD and reservoir impoundment).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Fate of water pumped from underground and contributions to sea-level rise

et al. 2016

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The contributions from terrestrial water sources to sea-level rise, other than ice caps and glaciers, are highly uncertain and heavily debated 1-5 . Recent assessments indicate that groundwater depletion (GWD) may become the most important positive terrestrial contribution 6-10 over the next 50 years, probably equal in magnitude to the current contributions from glaciers and ice caps 6 . However, the existing estimates assume that nearly 100% of groundwater extracted eventually ends up in the oceans. Owing to limited knowledge of the pathways and mechanisms governing the ultimate fate of pumped groundwater, the relative fraction of global GWD that contributes to sea-level rise remains unknown. Here, using a coupled climate-hydrological model 11,12 simulation, we show that only 80% of GWD ends up in the ocean. An increase in runo to the ocean accounts for roughly two-thirds, whereas the remainder results from the enhanced net flux of precipitation minus evaporation over the ocean, due to increased atmospheric vapour transport from the land to the ocean. The contribution of GWD to global sea-level rise amounted to 0.02 (±0.004) mm yr −1 in 1900 and increased to 0.27 (±0.04) mm yr −1 in 2000. This indicates that existing studies have substantially overestimated the contribution of GWD to global sea-level rise by a cumulative amount of at least 10 mm during the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. With other terrestrial water contributions included, we estimate the net terrestrial water contribution during the period 1993-2010 to be +0.12 (±0.04) mm yr −1 , suggesting that the net terrestrial water contribution reported in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report report is probably overestimated by a factor of three.Sea-level rise (SLR) is a direct effect of climate change, through the thermal expansion of ocean waters and the contribution of melt water from ice sheets, ice caps and glaciers. In an initial assessment 13 , the net contribution of sub-polar terrestrial water storage change to global sea-level variation was highly uncertain and heavily debated [14][15][16][17][18]

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fate of water pumped from underground and contributions to sea-level rise

et al. 2016

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“…At each temporal scale, some processes may be more relevant than others. For example, decadal trends can be controlled by groundwater depletion [Döll et al, 2014;Chen et al, 2016] or ice melt [Jacob et al, 2012;Velicogna et al, 2014], whereas short-term anomalies are usually related to fluctuations of the relevant atmospheric drivers [Humphrey et al, 2016]. We therefore decompose the TWS signal in order to relate changes in water storage to changes in atmospheric drivers at the temporal scales at which they are the most relevant.…”

Section: Decomposition Into Temporal Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A global reconstruction of climate‐driven subdecadal water storage variability

Humphrey

Gudmundsson

Seneviratne

2017

Geophysical Research Letters

103

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Since 2002, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission has provided unprecedented observations of global mass redistribution caused by hydrological processes. However, there are still few sources on pre‐2002 global terrestrial water storage (TWS). Classical approaches to retrieve past TWS rely on either land surface models (LSMs) or basin‐scale water balance calculations. Here we propose a new approach which statistically relates anomalies in atmospheric drivers to monthly GRACE anomalies. Gridded subdecadal TWS changes and time‐dependent uncertainty intervals are reconstructed for the period 1985–2015. Comparisons with model results demonstrate the performance and robustness of the derived data set, which represents a new and valuable source for studying subdecadal TWS variability, closing the ocean/land water budgets and assessing GRACE uncertainties. At midpoint between GRACE observations and LSM simulations, the statistical approach provides TWS estimates (doi:) that are essentially derived from observations and are based on a limited number of transparent model assumptions.

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“…Simulated TWS variations can also be validated by continuous GPS observations at more than 200 network stations worldwide because water storage variations cause crustal deformations which lead to displacements of the GPS reference point (Döll et al 2014b). Comparing simulated TWS variations against both GRACE and GPS, Döll et al (2014b) identified regions where the WaterGAP GHM underestimates seasonal variability of TWS and found that maximum TWS occurs 1 month too early in WaterGAP for most land areas (based on GRACE only). Validating groundwater depletion as computed by WaterGAP against both in situ well observations and GRACE TWS allowed the conclusion that farmers in groundwater depletion area irrigate with only 70 % of the optimal value (Döll et al 2014a).…”

Section: Multi-criteria Validation Against River Discharge and Geodetmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling Freshwater Resources at the Global Scale: Challenges and Prospects

et al. 2015

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Quantification of spatially and temporally resolved water flows and water storage variations for all land areas of the globe is required to assess water resources, water scarcity and flood hazards, and to understand the Earth system. This quantification is done with the help of global hydrological models (GHMs). What are the challenges and prospects in the development and application of GHMs? Seven important challenges are presented. (1) Data scarcity makes quantification of human water use difficult even though significant progress has been achieved in the last decade. (2) series of water availability and use are needed to provide good indicators of water scarcity.(6) Integration of gradient-based groundwater modelling into GHMs is necessary for a better simulation of groundwater-surface water interactions and capillary rise. (7) Detection and attribution of human interference with freshwater systems by using GHMs are constrained by data of insufficient quality but also GHM uncertainty itself. Regarding prospects for progress, we propose to decrease the uncertainty of GHM output by making better use of in situ and remotely sensed observations of output variables such as river discharge or total water storage variations by multi-criteria validation, calibration or data assimilation. Finally, we present an initiative that works towards the vision of hyperresolution global hydrological modelling where GHM outputs would be provided at a 1-km resolution with reasonable accuracy.

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Global‐scale assessment of groundwater depletion and related groundwater abstractions: Combining hydrological modeling with information from well observations and GRACE satellites

Cited by 641 publications

References 79 publications

Fate of water pumped from underground and contributions to sea-level rise

Fate of water pumped from underground and contributions to sea-level rise

A global reconstruction of climate‐driven subdecadal water storage variability

Modelling Freshwater Resources at the Global Scale: Challenges and Prospects

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