Explicit representation of groundwater process in a global-scale land surface model to improve the prediction of water resources

Groundwater is the most important freshwater resource and its relevance can be viewed in two aspects; a pervasive and seemingly abundant storage of freshwater and a consistent source of surface water in dry season in form of base runoff, which is nothing but a groundwater reservoir discharging into rivers. For proper estimation of groundwater resources in current and future climate conditions, explicit physically-based representation of groundwater process is necessary in models. Traditionally, global land surface models (LSMs) mainly focused on energy balance at land surface and often they have simplified runoff scheme largely neglecting the groundwater process. In this study, an explicit shallow groundwater representation was integrated into a LSM, Minimal Advanced Treatments of Surface Interaction and Runoff (MATSIRO).