Warming Groundwater Affects Millions – Not Only Humans.
While mostly hidden, groundwater is of central importance to surface ecosystems and human society. Christian Griebler, researcher at the University of Vienna and ECH-member, recently contributed to a new global model of groundwater temperature that predicts the effects of climate change on this subterranean ecosystem.
There is a hidden world beneath our feet: groundwater. Similar to the depths of the ocean, this ecosystem is vast and not well studied. Nevertheless, it boasts an intricate ecology that affects water quality and thus surface ecosystems and human society. And just like the atmosphere and the oceans, groundwater is warming due to climate change.
Christian Griebler, professor for limnology at the Department of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology at the University of Vienna, studies groundwater and its ecology. He recently contributed to a global model of groundwater temperatures published in Nature Geoscience that projects them forward until 2100 based on the IPCC’s climate pathways. The interdisciplinary model that, for the first time, combines international, national, and regional data shows an increase in water temperature in most regions of the world and at different depths and this could affect the quality of drinking water for millions of people. And not only that—the increased temperatures would also affect the extensive habitat of terrestrial groundwater, its ecosystems, and the surface water systems connected to it.
