OR/17/026 Introduction
| Mansour, M M, and Hughes, A G. 2017. Summary of results for national scale recharge modelling under conditions of predicted climate change. British Geological Survey Internal Report, OR/17/026. |
Groundwater in the context of climate change
The UK Government 25 year Environment Plan has an ambition to improve air and water quality and protect our many threatened plants, trees and wildlife species. The environment plan sets out goals for improving the environment within a generation and leaving it in a better state than we found it. It details how the government will work with communities and businesses to do this. The Government’s 25 Year Plan recognizes the role of groundwater as an important source of natural capital.
Groundwater is a vital source of water for public water supply, agriculture and industrial operations and is also a natural asset that supports a wide range environmental benefits.
Within the 25 year Plan there are two key environmental benefits and pressures that groundwater is intrinsically linked.
Clean and plentiful water: We will achieve clean and plentiful water by improving at least three quarters of our waters to be close to their natural state as soon as is practicable. This includes reducing the damaging abstraction of water from rivers and groundwater, ensuring that by 2021 the proportion of water bodies with enough water to support environmental standards increases from 72% to 77% for groundwater bodies.
Mitigating and adapting to climate change: We will take all possible action to mitigate climate change, while adapting to reduce its impact. This will include making sure that all policies, programmes and investment decisions take into account the possible extent of climate change this century.
The Environment Agency (EA), which is responsible for the management of groundwater, must ensure that goals and targets for short term and long term plans includes improving groundwater sustainability while adapting to the impact of climate change.
The Environment Agency has a requirement under the Water Framework Directive (WFD) to assess the quantitative status of groundwater bodies. This has been undertaken for recharge based on current conditions. Climate change is likely to affect rainfall, temperature, land cover and growing season and could significantly change recharge. If climate change significantly reduces recharge then this could degrade the quantative status of groundwater bodies. An assessment, therefore, is required to determine how recharge will change in the future.
Structure of report
This report describes the work undertaken for the Environment Agency under contract entitled ‘Ground water resources and climate change’ (Project number: SC160018). It presents the main results of running the recharge model ZOODRM for Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) under conditions of climate change. The Future Flows Climate dataset (Prudhomme et al., 2012[1]), produced by the Future Flow and Groundwater Level (FFGWL) project, which consists of rainfall and potential evaporation produced from 11 ensembles has been run through the model. Preliminary analysis of the results produced has been undertaken.
The report consists of three main sections: description of the methodology for producing the results including the model used to create them, presentation of the narrative, and the results to support it. A brief summary section with recommendations for further work is provided at the end of the document.
Due to the significant amount of results produced by this work the majority of the results are contained in Appendices, which include descriptive text.
References
- ↑ Prudhomme, C, Dadson, S, Morris, D, Williamson, J, Goodsell, G, Crooks, S, Boelee, L, Davies, H, Buys, G, Lafon, T, and Watts, G. 2012. Future Flows Climate: an ensemble of 1 km climate change projections for hydrological application in Great Britain. Earth System Science Data, 4(1), pp.143–148.