Modelling Groundwater Recharge with Multiple Climate Models in Machine Learning Frameworks

Groundwater supplies 70% of global irrigation water needs; 25% of total freshwater consumption the United States; and a source of safe drinking water to 90% of the United States rural population. Climate models are increasingly being used to simulate the groundwater recharge. However, these climate models often have uncertainty in their recharge predictions. These uncertainties in climate models’ predictions stem from the difference in the models’ structure, the models’ parameters, and the models’ physics. In this study, ten regional climate models (RCMs) are used to model groundwater recharge. The RCMs used in this study were obtained from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP). In order to combat the uncertainty in the RCMs’ recharge predictions, the predictions are averaged in machine learning frameworks. The machine learning models used in this study include the artificial neural network (ANN), the deep neural networks (DNNs), and the support vector regression (SVR) models. Results suggest that the radial basis function-based SVR model was the superior model in modelling recharge.