Post by Tom Gleeson, Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Victoria.
‘Groundwater-surface water interactions’ has become standard hydrologic lexicon and a perennial favorite session title at various 
conferences… but how often do you hear the phrase ‘groundwater-climate interactions’?
A group of hydrologists, hydrogeologists, atmospheric scientists and geodesists that met in Taiwan this week would say ‘not enough!’ We met to discuss how groundwater, the slow-moving grandparent of the hydrologic cycle interacts with the atmosphere, the fast-moving toddler. The 2nd international workshop on Impacts of Groundwater in Earth system Models (IGEM), was a follow-up of a 2016 workshop in Paris in 2016 (and part of a the bilateral French-Taiwanese IGEM project).
Sessions were focused around a few themes:
- Groundwater use and its impacts
- Groundwater representation, assimilation and evaluation in climate models
- Remote Sensing and in-situ observations on groundwater
- Groundwater-climate interactions with a special focus on Nebraska
And in the afternoons we convened discussion groups focused on ‘groundwater representation in continental to global hydrologic models’ and ‘groundwater-climate interactions’ and arguably just as importantly we ate lots of great food including an awesome fusion dinner and dumplings at the famous Din Tai Fung.
I would love to say that we could provide you with a simple, robust answer to the leading question of how and where groundwater is connected to climate – a holy grail of Earth System science. But like all good questions, the answer at least right now is ‘a little bit in some places, and it depends how you look at it’. We discussed the first enticing but preliminary results of potential hotspots of groundwater-climate interactions, expounded on the importance to water sustainability and dissected vadose zone parameterizations in land surface models but the quest for this holy grail goes on… We plan to meet again in a few years in Saskatchewan and maybe have a few more answers. Do you want to join us on this holy grail quest, and maybe end up making ‘groundwater-climate interactions’ more standard lexicon?
P.S. Thanks to Min-Hui Lo and his group at National Taiwan University for the excellent hospitality and organization! P.S.S. Just in case it goes viral, the term ‘baddest-ass model’ was first used by Jay Famiglietti (see below).
