Chapter 6
Impact of Climate Change on Groundwater
Resource of India: A Geographical
Appraisal
Sutapa Mukhopadhyay and Amit Kumar Mandal
Abstract The inherent advantages of consistent temperature, widespread availability, decentralized access, limited vulnerability, outstanding natural quality, low
extraction cost, and drought protection capacity as well as fluctuation in seasonal
availability, result in monsoonal rainfall uses of groundwater in the domestic and
agricultural sectors of India to be ever increasing. The rapid growth of groundwaterbased irrigation systems in the past 50 years has multiplied groundwater extraction
in India, resulting in its overexploitation. Recent study has revealed that climate
change leads to the altered precipitation and evapotranspiration rate of the country,
so it may be considered as tan additional major threat to this resource. Hence,
understanding the behavior and dimensions of the groundwater regime under future
climatic and other changes is significant in adopting an accurate water management
strategy. This review presents an outline of the groundwater resource base of India
and its susceptibility to ongoing and future trends of changes in climatic variables.
Keywords Groundwater resource · Climate change · Groundwater fluctuation ·
Projected groundwater level
Introduction
Water is the utmost important element of our environment. Without water, life
cannot be sustained on Earth. It is fundamental for our existence, crucial for
alleviating poverty, hunger, and disease, and critical for economic use (Chinnaiah
2015). Of the total water reserve of 386 Â 10
9 Km
3 on the Earth, the total freshwater
reserve accounts for 35.03 Â 10
6 Km
3 (2.8%), and 30% of the world’s freshwater
(10.5 Â 10
6 Km
3 ) is stored in the subsurface aquifers in the form of groundwater
(UNESCO 1994; Das 2011).
S. Mukhopadhyay (*) · A. K. Mandal
Department of Geography, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. N. Islam, A. van Amstel (eds.), India: Climate Change Impacts, Mitigation
and Adaptation in Developing Countries, Springer Climate,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67865-4_6
125
Impact of Climate Change on Groundwater
Resource of India: A Geographical
Appraisal
Sutapa Mukhopadhyay and Amit Kumar Mandal
Abstract The inherent advantages of consistent temperature, widespread availability, decentralized access, limited vulnerability, outstanding natural quality, low
extraction cost, and drought protection capacity as well as fluctuation in seasonal
availability, result in monsoonal rainfall uses of groundwater in the domestic and
agricultural sectors of India to be ever increasing. The rapid growth of groundwaterbased irrigation systems in the past 50 years has multiplied groundwater extraction
in India, resulting in its overexploitation. Recent study has revealed that climate
change leads to the altered precipitation and evapotranspiration rate of the country,
so it may be considered as tan additional major threat to this resource. Hence,
understanding the behavior and dimensions of the groundwater regime under future
climatic and other changes is significant in adopting an accurate water management
strategy. This review presents an outline of the groundwater resource base of India
and its susceptibility to ongoing and future trends of changes in climatic variables.
Keywords Groundwater resource · Climate change · Groundwater fluctuation ·
Projected groundwater level
Introduction
Water is the utmost important element of our environment. Without water, life
cannot be sustained on Earth. It is fundamental for our existence, crucial for
alleviating poverty, hunger, and disease, and critical for economic use (Chinnaiah
2015). Of the total water reserve of 386 Â 10
9 Km
3 on the Earth, the total freshwater
reserve accounts for 35.03 Â 10
6 Km
3 (2.8%), and 30% of the world’s freshwater
(10.5 Â 10
6 Km
3 ) is stored in the subsurface aquifers in the form of groundwater
(UNESCO 1994; Das 2011).
S. Mukhopadhyay (*) · A. K. Mandal
Department of Geography, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. N. Islam, A. van Amstel (eds.), India: Climate Change Impacts, Mitigation
and Adaptation in Developing Countries, Springer Climate,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67865-4_6
125