Forecasting Salt-Water Intrusion into Coastal Aquifers Due to Climate Change

A global, coastal database was investigated in a model typology based on a simple, unconfined, coastal aquifer to begin to explore the impacts of climate change on saline intrusion. A basic database provided temperature, precipitation, population density and evapotranspiration in mm/yr. Because evapotranspiration is not forecast, as a rule, in climate models the evapotranspiration value is predicted from a linear correlation with the temperature data. A "freshwater scaling parameter" was calculated as the average annual precipitation minus the predicted evapotranspiration minus the product of the population density times the national per capita water use. A few parameters provide good resolution of types of coastal hydrology as a basis for forecasts. When fully developed, the algorithm is intended to be incorporated into the Dynamic Interactive Vulnerability Assessment (DIVA) model presently to investigate salt water intrusion length in estuaries, beach erosion, land-loss and other parameters.