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  • Review Article
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Ground water and climate change

Nature Climate Change volume 3, pages 322–329 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

As the world's largest distributed store of fresh water, ground water plays a central part in sustaining ecosystems and enabling human adaptation to climate variability and change. The strategic importance of ground water for global water and food security will probably intensify under climate change as more frequent and intense climate extremes (droughts and floods) increase variability in precipitation, soil moisture and surface water. Here we critically review recent research assessing the impacts of climate on ground water through natural and human-induced processes as well as through groundwater-driven feedbacks on the climate system. Furthermore, we examine the possible opportunities and challenges of using and sustaining groundwater resources in climate adaptation strategies, and highlight the lack of groundwater observations, which, at present, limits our understanding of the dynamic relationship between ground water and climate.

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Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3: Global map of anthropogenic groundwater recharge rates in areas with substantial irrigation by surface water.

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Change history

  • 03 December 2012

    In the version of this Review Article originally published online, in Table 1, 'Flux-based method' and 'Volume-based method' should have cited refs 91 and 92, respectively. This error has now been corrected in all versions of the Review Article.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge support provided by the International Association of Hydrogeologists' Commission on Groundwater & Climate Change and the UNESCO IHP GRAPHIC Programme (http://www.gwclim.org) in coordinating this Review.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Richard G. Taylor

  2. Bureau of Economic Geology, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Texas 78758-4445, USA,

    Bridget Scanlon

  3. Institute of Physical Geography, University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt, D-60054, Germany

    Petra Döll

  4. Hydrological Science Branch, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, 20771, Maryland, USA

    Matt Rodell

  5. Department of Physical Geography, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, 3508, TC, The Netherlands

    Rens van Beek, Yoshihide Wada & Marc F. P. Bierkens

  6. Géosciences Rennes, Université de Rennes 1, Rennes, 35042, France

    Laurent Longuevergne

  7. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, NCGRT, James Cook University, Cairns, 4870, QLD, Australia

    Marc Leblanc

  8. UC Center for Hydrologic Modelling, University of California, Irvine, 92617, California, USA

    James S. Famiglietti

  9. School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK

    Mike Edmunds

  10. U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, 20192, Virginia, USA

    Leonard Konikow

  11. Agricultural Systems Research Unit, USDA-ARS, Fort Collins, 80526, Colorado, USA

    Timothy R. Green

  12. School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China

    Jianyao Chen

  13. Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto, 630-8047, Japan

    Makoto Taniguchi

  14. British Geological Survey, Edinburgh, EH9 3LA, UK

    Alan MacDonald

  15. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University, 08901, New Jersey, USA

    Ying Fan

  16. Department of Geology and Geological Engineering, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, 80401, Colorado, USA

    Reed M. Maxwell

  17. Geological Survey of Israel, Jerusalem, 95501, Israel

    Yossi Yechieli

  18. Department of Geosciences, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, 94132, California, USA

    Jason J. Gurdak

  19. Department of Earth Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, V5A 1S6, British Columbia, Canada

    Diana M. Allen

  20. Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Mohammad Shamsudduha

  21. School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

    Kevin Hiscock

  22. International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management (ICHARM), UNESCO, Tsukuba, 153-8505, Japan

    Pat J.-F. Yeh

  23. Environmental Science and Technology Department, Cranfield University, Milton Keynes, MK43 0AL, UK

    Ian Holman

  24. Division of Water Sciences, UNESCO-IHP, Paris, 75732, Cedex 15, France

    Holger Treidel

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Correspondence to Richard G. Taylor.

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Taylor, R., Scanlon, B., Döll, P. et al. Ground water and climate change. Nature Clim Change 3, 322–329 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1744

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1744

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