Understanding the potential of climate teleconnections to project future groundwater drought

Abstract

Abstract. Predicting the next major drought is of paramount interest to water managers, globally. Estimating the onset of groundwater drought is of particular importance, as groundwater resources are often assumed to be more resilient when surface water resources begin to fail. A potential source of long-term forecasting is offered by possible periodic controls on groundwater level via teleconnections with oscillatory ocean-atmosphere systems. However, relationships between large-scale climate systems and regional to local-scale rainfall, ET and groundwater are often complex and non-linear so that the influence of long-term climate cycles on groundwater drought remains poorly understood. Furthermore it is currently unknown whether the absolute contribution of multi-annual climate variability to total groundwater storage is significant. This study assesses the extent to which inter-annual variability in groundwater can be used to indicate the timing of groundwater droughts in the UK. Continuous wavelet transforms show how repeating teleconnection-driven 7-year and 16–32 year cycles in the majority of groundwater sites from all the UK's major aquifers can systematically control the recurrence of groundwater drought; and we provide evidence that these periodic modes are driven by teleconnections. Wavelet reconstructions demonstrate that multi-annual periodicities of the North Atlantic Oscillation, known to drive North Atlantic meteorology, comprise up to 40 % of the total groundwater storage variability. Furthermore, the majority of UK recorded droughts in recent history coincide with a minima phase in the 7-year NAO-driven cycles in groundwater level, allowing the estimation of future drought occurrences on a multi-annual timescale. Long-range groundwater drought forecasts via climate teleconnections present transformational opportunities to drought prediction and its management across the North Atlantic region.

Hindcasting multidecadal predevelopment groundwater levels in the Floridan aquifer

“…Recent studies suggest multidecadal variability in aquifer levels are controlled by both high frequency intra‐annual seasonal cycles and long‐term low frequency climate cycles, including the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) (50 to 90‐year cycle), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) (15 to 25‐year cycle), El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (3 to 7‐year cycle), and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) (7 to 32‐year cycle) (Perez‐Valdivia et al 2012; Van Lanen et al 2013; Loon et al 2014; Van Loon 2015; Huo et al 2016; Rust et al 2018, 2019; Neves et al 2019). Establishing benchmark predevelopment groundwater levels is challenging when the period of record does not capture long‐term periodicities from AMO, PDO, and ENSO.…”

Comment on nhess-2020-416

“…Actually, in the Korean Peninsula across the sea from Japan, the spring drought events in this region have also been confirmed to be affected by the NAO (Kim et al, 2017). Also, the majority of UK recorded droughts in recent history showed a clear relationship with NAO (Rust et al, 2019). Even in the northeastern United States, drought prediction was performed based on NAO (Berton et al, 2017).…”

Large-scale Climate Variability Footprint in Water Levels of Alluvial Aquifers Across Iran

“…3), Fig. 4a the USA, Canada, and Europe (e.g., Hanson et al, 2004;Perez-Valdivia et al, 2012;Kuss and Gurdak, 2014;Velasco et al, 2015;Rust et al, 2019 (Walvoord et al, 2003;McMahon et al, 2007). Consequently, the linkage between atmospheric circulations and Iranian aquifers generally weakens from the upper latitudes (particularly, the northwest and western Zagros regions) to lower latitudes (especially, southwestern Iran) with drier conditions.…”