Climate change impact on groundwater and soil geochemistry—emerging challenges: a review

Abstract Climate change is a pressing global issue. It affects the existence of natural environment including groundwater and soil resources, and its biogeochemical processes. Inequal historical and ongoing contributions to the global greenhouse gas emissions over the decades are the main cause. Unsustainable energy consumption, land use, and land-use change, lifestyles and production patterns are triggering factors. Between regions, between and within countries, and between individuals aggravates over a period of time. As a consequence, numerous weather and climatic extremes are already impacting daily lifestyle of all. This has had broad negative effects on human health, food and water security, economies, and society, as well as losses and damages to nature and people. The availability of water resources will significantly impact the horizon of many projects in the upcoming years due to global warming. Although it is unknown how urbanisation and climate change could affect groundwater quality, these variables may place increased stress on groundwater supply systems. This review explores the potential impacts of climate change-induced phenomena of altered precipitation patterns, increased temperatures, sea-level rise and changes in vegetation cover. Also attempts to discuss the effects on groundwater quality parameters-pH, salinity, nutrient levels, and contaminant transport. Stress on groundwater resources is huge due to climate change, urbanisation of agricultural areas, depleting freshwater quality, and growing water treatment costs. Inherent variations in terrestrial processes, such as those caused by human actions, influence the environment. Mechanisms of groundwater recharge and sea level rise based coastal hazards that affects salinity, dissolved oxygen levels, and redox conditions are mainly focused on. Primary data on groundwater systems in relation to climate change have been rarely reported. The findings highlight the importance of complex natural interactions in an era of climate impacts on groundwater chemistry to fine tune effective groundwater resource management and planning. Both research and public interest in the projected effects of climate change on groundwater have intensified for the study of coastal lands. Specifically, an overview of climate change with respect to sea level rise, groundwater characteristics, soil geochemistry, and microbial community in coastal regions is discussed.