Groundwater Buffers Decreasing Glacier Melt in an Andean Watershed—But Not Forever
Name
Geophysical Research Letters - 2019 - Somers - Groundwater Buffers Decreasing Glacier Melt in an Andean Watershed But Not.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
13.96 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
37e18a78ac97a77af9b976a1a0185884
Author(s)
Somers, LD
McKenzie, JM
Mark, BG
Lagos, P
Ng, GHC
Wickert, AD
Yarleque, C
Baraër, M
Silva, Y
Date Issued
November 28, 2019
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Citation
Somers, LD, McKenzie, JM, Mark, BG, Lagos, P, Ng, GHC et al. 2019. "Groundwater Buffers Decreasing Glacier Melt in an Andean Watershed—But Not Forever." Geophysical Research Letters, 46 (22).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
©2019. The Authors. Accelerating mountain glacier recession in a warming climate threatens the sustainability of mountain water resources. The extent to which groundwater will provide resilience to these water resources is unknown, in part due to a lack of data and poorly understood interactions between groundwater and surface water. Here we address this knowledge gap by linking climate, glaciers, surface water, and groundwater into an integrated model of the Shullcas Watershed, Peru, in the tropical Andes, the region experiencing the most rapid mountain-glacier retreat on Earth. For a range of climate scenarios, our model projects that glaciers will disappear by 2100. The loss of glacial meltwater will be buffered by relatively consistent groundwater discharge, which only receives minor recharge (~2%) from glacier melt. However, increasing temperature and associated evapotranspiration, alongside potential decreases in precipitation, will decrease groundwater recharge and streamflow, particularly for the RCP 8.5 emission scenario.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL084730
