Under variable and changing climates, distributed groundwater storage sustains vital ecosystems and enables freshwater withdrawals globally for agriculture, drinking water, and industry. This seminar explores recent (since 2002) changes in groundwater storage (ΔGWS) in 37 of the world's large (>100 000 km2) aquifer systems using satellite datasets from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and land-surface models. Notwithstanding uncertainty in GRACE-derived ΔGWS, assessed trends are overwhelmingly non-linear and challenge prevailing narratives of global-scale groundwater depletion. But what influences or controls the (non-linear) variability in ΔGWS? What role might large-scale controls on climate variability like the El Niño Southern Oscillation play? How does the regional evaluation of estimated changes in groundwater storage from GRACE compare with changes observed more locally through piezometry?
Registration Link: https://bit.ly/3wIvBM6