Groundwater systems provide an important source of water supply as well as contributing baseflow to rivers lakes and dependent ecosystems and so the impact of climate change on these systems needs to be understood Calculating recharge to groundwater systems is therefore necessary to quantify what is typically one of thelargest components of the groundwater balance This study uses the national scale recharge model developed forthe British mainland and the 11 ensemble members from the Hadley Centre for rainfall and potential evaporationcreated by the Future Flows and Groundwater Levels FFGWL project to investigate the impact of future climateon groundwater resources Changes to seasonal and monthly recharge for the 2050s and 2080s time slices havebeen produced for the whole modelled area and for river basin districts for England and Wales Areal summariesand monthly time series of recharge values show a generally consistent trend of increased recharge in winter decreased recharge in summer and mixed pattern in autumn and spring The work shows that increased winterrainfall is the main factor in increasing recharge Water balance calculations reveal that over the 2050s and2080s the climate change signal predominates over the annual variability which results in a clearer pattern ofmore recharge being concentrated in fewer months This finding should prove useful for water resources plannersto assess the resilience of groundwater resources to climate change Further work is recommended to understandthe sequencing of flooding and drought events and to the effects of soil health and land cover changes in thefuture analysis

The impact of climate change on groundwater recharge PDF

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