Groundwater Buffers Decreasing Glacier Melt in an Andean Watershed—But Not Forever
©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 bet...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/141183 |
| _version_ | 1811078717821157376 |
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| author | Somers, LD McKenzie, JM Mark, BG Lagos, P Ng, GHC Wickert, AD Yarleque, C Baraër, M Silva, Y |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Somers, LD McKenzie, JM Mark, BG Lagos, P Ng, GHC Wickert, AD Yarleque, C Baraër, M Silva, Y |
| author_sort | Somers, LD |
| collection | MIT |
| description | ©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. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:04:21Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/141183 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:04:21Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | American Geophysical Union (AGU) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1411832023-04-10T20:08:37Z Groundwater Buffers Decreasing Glacier Melt in an Andean Watershed—But Not Forever Somers, LD McKenzie, JM Mark, BG Lagos, P Ng, GHC Wickert, AD Yarleque, C Baraër, M Silva, Y Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering ©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. 2022-03-15T14:24:08Z 2022-03-15T14:24:08Z 2019-11-28 2022-03-15T14:19:31Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/141183 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). en 10.1029/2019GL084730 Geophysical Research Letters Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf American Geophysical Union (AGU) Wiley |
| spellingShingle | Somers, LD McKenzie, JM Mark, BG Lagos, P Ng, GHC Wickert, AD Yarleque, C Baraër, M Silva, Y Groundwater Buffers Decreasing Glacier Melt in an Andean Watershed—But Not Forever |
| title | Groundwater Buffers Decreasing Glacier Melt in an Andean Watershed—But Not Forever |
| title_full | Groundwater Buffers Decreasing Glacier Melt in an Andean Watershed—But Not Forever |
| title_fullStr | Groundwater Buffers Decreasing Glacier Melt in an Andean Watershed—But Not Forever |
| title_full_unstemmed | Groundwater Buffers Decreasing Glacier Melt in an Andean Watershed—But Not Forever |
| title_short | Groundwater Buffers Decreasing Glacier Melt in an Andean Watershed—But Not Forever |
| title_sort | groundwater buffers decreasing glacier melt in an andean watershed but not forever |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/141183 |
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