Climate Change Impacts on Groundwater Systems

Groundwater underpins water supply for billions of people and supports agriculture, industry and ecosystems. Climate change alters the balance of groundwater recharge and discharge through shifts in precipitation patterns, rising temperatures and more frequent extreme events. In many regions, reduced snowmelt, enhanced evapotranspiration and extended dry spells combine to diminish annual recharge, while elsewhere intensified rainfall can lead to episodic but inefficient replenishment. Sea-level rise and increased coastal pumping threaten the integrity of coastal aquifers through saline intrusion. Climate-driven changes in recharge variability and water-table dynamics also heighten the risk of groundwater droughts, with consequences for crop yields, drinking-water resilience and ecosystem health. Numerical models reveal substantial uncertainties arising from differences in climate projections, hydrological representations and land-surface feedbacks, yet consistently indicate that vulnerable regions will require adaptive management. Integrating forecasts of groundwater response into water-resource planning is therefore essential for sustaining supplies, mitigating contamination risks and safeguarding environmental flows in a warming world.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent analyses of historical records and modelling have reconstructed groundwater recharge in central Mediterranean basins over more than a millennium, revealing how phases of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and solar variability have driven prolonged dry spells and reduced recharge. These insights underscore the importance of climatic memory effects in aquifer resilience and guide basin-scale strategies for water scarcity adaptation. In parallel, climate-model experiments for key mid-latitude aquifers demonstrate that trends in groundwater storage result not solely from changing precipitation but also from rising evapotranspiration and diminished snowmelt. The study highlights divergent aquifer responses under high-emission scenarios and emphasises the combined impacts of climate and extraction, showing that anthropogenic pumping often exceeds natural replenishment and must be integrated into sustainability assessments.

Climate Change Impacts on Groundwater Systems publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in climate change impacts on groundwater systems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Groundwater recharge: The process by which water percolates through soil and rock to replenish an aquifer.

Evapotranspiration: The combined loss of water from soil and plant surfaces to the atmosphere.

Aquifer: A geological formation capable of storing and transmitting significant quantities of groundwater.

Hydrological model: A computational tool used to simulate components of the water cycle, including recharge, runoff and storage.

Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation: A climate mode of long-term sea-surface temperature variations in the North Atlantic that influences regional hydroclimate.

References

1. Millennium-scale changes in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation influenced groundwater recharge rates in Italy. Communications Earth & Environment (2024).
2. Divergent effects of climate change on future groundwater availability in key mid-latitude aquifers. Nature Communications (2020).
3. Climate change's ripple effect on water supply systems and the water-energy nexus – A review. Water Resources and Industry (2024).
4. Water-table response to extreme precipitation events. Journal of Hydrology (2023).
5. Uncertainty of simulated groundwater recharge at different global warming levels: a global-scale multi-model ensemble study. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (2021).