The effects of climate change on potential groundwater recharge in Great Britain

Abstract

The predicted increase in mean global temperature due to climate change is expected to affect water availability and, in turn, cause both environmental and societal impacts. To understand the potential impact of climate change on future sustainable water resources, this paper outlines a methodology to quantify the effects of climate change on potential groundwater recharge (or hydrological excess water) for three locations in the north and south of Great Britain. Using results from a stochastic weather generator, actual evapotranspiration and potential groundwater recharge time-series for the historic baseline 1961–1990 and for a future ‘high’ greenhouse gas emissions scenario for the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s time periods were simulated for Coltishall in East Anglia, Gatwick in southeast England and Paisley in west Scotland. Under the ‘high’ gas emissions scenario, results showed a decrease of 20% in potential groundwater recharge for Coltishall, 40% for Gatwick and 7% for Paisley by the end of this century. The persistence of dry periods is shown to increase for the three sites during the 2050s and 2080s. Gatwick presents the driest conditions, Coltishall the largest variability of wet and dry periods and Paisley little variability. For Paisley, the main effect of climate change is evident during the dry season (April–September), when the potential amount of hydrological excess water decreases by 88% during the 2080s. Overall, it is concluded that future climate may present a decrease in potential groundwater recharge that will increase stress on local and regional groundwater resources that are already under ecosystem and water supply pressures

The impact of climate change on groundwater recharge and runoff in a humid, equatorial catchment: sensitivity of projections to rainfall intensity

“…Arnell, 1999a,b;Guo et al, 2002;Tate et al, 2004;Leander & Buishand, 2007;Linderink et al, 2007;Herrera-Pantoja & Hiscock, 2008) yet our results show that this approach can substantially underestimate groundwater recharge. The assumption of a constant relationship between modelled and historical precipitation under future climatic conditions is, however, a source of uncertainty with the transformation approach.…”

Linking Climate Change and Groundwater

“…Predicting the dynamics and processes interactions affecting groundwater recharge over time requires a reliable prediction of critical climate variables Herrera-Pantoja and Hiscock 2008;Jyrkama and Sykes 2007). Recharge occurs via two general pathways in many environments: diffuse recharge to the water table and focused recharge that occurs at locations where surface-water flow is concentrated at the land surface, including stream channels, lakes, topographic depressions, irrigated-agricultural land, and other macropore, preferential-flow pathways (Small 2005).…”

Effect of Climate Change on Potential Groundwater Recharge in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka

“…Eckhardt and Ulbrich [12] from their study on the Dill catchment in south east Germany, suggest that recharge rates could be as low as 50% of the existing values, whereas Herrera-Pantoja and Hiscock [13] from their study in three locations (Coltishall, Gatwick and Paisley)in UK conclude that recharge rates could be as low as 88% of the existing rates at least for Paisley and in general it will be declining with the increase of temperatures. Thampi and Raneesh [18], from their study in Chaliyar river basin in Kerala, South India forecast a reduction of recharge by 4 -7% by 2071-2100.…”

“…In the last century, the temperature of the earth rose by about 0.6C [4] and it is expected to rise between 1.4 to 5.8C by 2100 due to the emission of greenhouse gasses [5] and the temperature in Sri Lanka is said to increase by 0.9 -4.0C by 2100 over the baseline period temperature [6]. Worldwide, there have been many studies related to various aspects of climate change on groundwater [7,8,9,10] and a relatively fair number of studies on the effect of climate change on the groundwater recharge [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]. However, the 4 th report of IPCC [19] states that "there has been very little research on the impact of climate change on groundwater and that the few studies of climatic impacts on groundwater for various aquifers show very site specific results".…”