A high resolution global scale groundwater model

Groundwater is the world's largest accessible source of fresh water. It plays a vital role in satisfying needs for drinking water, agriculture and industrial activities. During times of drought groundwater sustains baseflow to rivers and wetlands, thereby supporting ecosystems. Most global scale hydrological models (GHMs) do not include a groundwater flow component, mainly due to lack of geohydrological data at the global scale. For the simulation of lateral flow and groundwater head dynamics a realistic physical representation of the groundwater system is needed, especially for GHMs that run at finer resolution. In this study we present a global scale groundwater model (run at 6' as dynamic steady state) using MODFLOW to construct an equilibrium water table at its natural state as the result of long-term climatic forcing. The aquifer schematization and properties were based on available global datasets of lithology and transmissivities combined with estimated aquifer thickness of an upper unconfined aquifer. The model is forced with outputs from the land-surface model PCR-GLOBWB, specifically with net recharge and surface water levels. A sensitivity analysis, in which the model was run with various parameter settings, showed variation in saturated conductivity causes most of the groundwater level variations. Simulated groundwater heads were validated against reported piezometer observations. The validation showed that groundwater depths are reasonably well simulated for many regions of the world, especially for sediment basins (R2 = 0.95). The simulated regional scale groundwater patterns and flowpaths confirm the relevance of taking lateral groundwater flow into account in GHMs. Flowpaths show inter-basin groundwater flow that can be a significant part of a basins water budget and helps to sustain river baseflow, explicitly during times of droughts. Also important aquifer systems are recharged by inter-basin groundwater flows that positively affect water availability.