Vulnerability to the impact of climate change on renewable groundwater resources: a global-scale assessment

By Petra Döll. 2009

508 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Climate change will lead to significant changes of groundwater recharge and thus renewable groundwater resources. Using the global water resources and use model WaterGAP, the impact of climate change on groundwater recharge and the number of affected people was computed for four climate scenarios by two climate models. Vulnerability of humans to decreased groundwater resources depends on both the degree of decrease and the sensitivity of the human system to the decrease. For each grid cell, a sensitivity index composed of a water scarcity indicator, an indicator for dependence of water supply on groundwater and the Human Development Index was quantified. Combining per cent groundwater recharge decrease with the sensitivity index, global maps of vulnerability to the impact of decreased groundwater recharge in the 2050s were derived. In the A2 (B2) emissions scenario, 18.4–19.3% (16.1–18.1%) of the global population of 10.7 (9.1) billion would be affected by groundwater recharge decreases of at least 10%, and 4.8–5.7% (3.8–3.8%) of the global population would be in the two highest vulnerability classes. The highest vulnerabilities are found at the North African rim of the Mediterranean Sea, in southwestern Africa, in northeastern Brazil and in the central Andes, which are areas of moderate to high sensitivity. For most of the areas with high population density and high sensitivity, model results indicate that groundwater recharge is unlikely to decrease by more than 10% until the 2050s. However, a fifth to a third of the population may be affected by a groundwater recharge increase of more than 10%, with negative impacts in the case of shallow water tables. The spatial distribution of vulnerability, even at the continental scale, differs more strongly between the two climate models than between the two emissions scenarios.

Subfields: Geochemistry and Petrology, Ocean Engineering, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ba17f3b381b14b06e23229ab1b4f95a906e5bfb0

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Citations in the corpus

A global water scarcity assessment under Shared Socio-economic Pathways – Part 2: Water availability and scarcity (2012, background): “Groundwater is an important source of water, and has been reported to be vulnerable to climate change due to predicted decreases in recharge (D̈oll, 2009).”
Enhancing the relevance of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways for climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability research (2014, background): “Water (Döll 2009; Hinkel et al. 2012; Nicholls 2004; Pérez Urrestarazu et al. 2010) Spatial population, spatial/national GDP, Human Development Index”
Non-renewable groundwater use and groundwater depletion: a review (2019, methodology): “Döll (2009) and Döll et al (2012) explicitly used information on ‘fractional groundwater to total water withdrawals per country’ from the IGRACGGIS database and estimated global groundwater withdrawal to be 1100–1500 km3 yr−1 (around year 2005).”
Global water scarcity including surface water quality and expansions of clean water technologies (2021, background): “Previous studies have highlighted amajor role of groundwater resources availability and changes on water scarcity levels (Döll 2009, Foster and Macdonald 2014, Richey et al 2015, Damkjaer and Taylor 2017).”
Lost food, wasted resources: global food supply chain losses and their impacts on freshwater, cropland, and fertiliser use. (2012, background): “The agricultural sector is responsible for 70% of global freshwater withdrawals and 90% of consumptive water uses (Döll, 2009; Shiklomanov, 2000).”
Sustainability of global water use: past reconstruction and future projections (2014, unknown): “1971–2000 2534–2566/1353–1375 36 921/- Simulated by LPJmL (0.5°) Döll (2009) 1100/- 2000 4020/1300 38 800/- IGRAC-GGIS and WaterGAP (0.5°) Wisser et al (2010) 1708/1199 Contemporary 2997/- 37 401/- Simulated by WBMplus (0.5°) Hanasaki et al (2010) -/703 Avg.”
How is the impact of climate change on river flow regimes related to the impact on mean annual runoff? A global-scale analysis (2012, background): “The WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model (WGHM) computes groundwater recharge, total runoff generation and river discharge, taking into account the impact of human water use and man-made reservoirs on river discharge (Döll 2009, Döll and Fiedler 2008).”