Long-term climatic change and sustainable ground water resources management

Abstract

Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs), prominently carbon dioxide (CO2), methane(CH4), nitrousoxide (N2O), and halocarbons, have risen from fossil-fuel combustion, deforestation, agriculture, andindustry. There is currently heated national and international debate about theconsequences of such increasing concentrations of GHGs on the Earth’s climate, and,ultimately, on life and society in the world as we know it. This paper reviews (i) long-termpatterns of climate change, secular climatic variability, and predicted population growthand their relation to water resources management, and, specifically, to ground waterresources management, (ii) means available for mitigating and adapting to trends ofclimatic change and climatic variability and their impacts on ground water resources.Long-term (that is, over hundreds of millions of years), global-scale, climaticfluctuations are compared with more recent (in the Holocene) patterns of theglobal and regional climates to shed light on the meaning of rising mean surfacetemperature over the last century or so, especially in regions whose historicalhydroclimatic records exhibit large inter-annual variability. One example of regionalground water resources response to global warming and population growth ispresented.