Articles | Volume 18, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1463-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1463-2025
Model description paper
 | 
10 Mar 2025
Model description paper |  | 10 Mar 2025

The Water Table Model (WTM) (v2.0.1): coupled groundwater and dynamic lake modelling

Kerry L. Callaghan, Andrew D. Wickert, Richard Barnes, and Jacqueline Austermann

Data sets

Water table: WTM steady-state water table simulations for LGM and present day K. L. Callaghan et al. https://doi.org/10.4211/hs.9eaa891ef9c44a19b3d40cdfcb1fe824

GEBCO_2020 Grid GEBCO Bathymetric Compilation Group https://doi.org/10.5285/a29c5465-b138-234d-e053-6c86abc040b9

ETOPO1 1 Arc-Minute Global Relief Model: Procedures, Data Sources and Analysis, NOAA Technical Memorandum NESDIS NGDC-24 C. Amante and B. W. Eakins https://doi.org/10.7289/V5C8276M

Monthly climate and climatic water balance for global terrestrial surfaces from 1958–2015 J. Abatzoglou et al. https://doi.org/10.7923/G43J3B0R

ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1940 to present H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

The Antarctica component of postglacial rebound model ICE-6G_C (VM5a) based upon GPS positioning, exposure age dating of ice thicknesses, and relative sea level histories (https://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/~peltier/data.php) D. F. Argus et al. https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggu140

Space geodesy constrains ice age terminal deglaciation: The global ICE-6G_C (VM5a) model (https://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/~peltier/data.php) W. Peltier et al. https://doi.org/10.1002/2014JB011176

Hybrid STATSGO/FAO (30-second for CONUS/5-minute elsewhere) Soil Texture NCAR https://ral.ucar.edu/model/wrf-noah-modeling-system

ETOPO1 1 Arc-Minute Global Relief Model NOAA National Geophysical Data Center https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/metadata/landing-page/bin/iso?id=gov.noaa.ngdc.mgg.dem:316

Model code and software

Water Table Model K. L. Callaghan et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10611076

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Short summary
We present the Water Table Model (WTM), a new model for simulating groundwater and lake levels at continental scales over millennia. The WTM enables long-term evaluations of water-table changes. As a proof of concept, we simulate the North American water table for the present and the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), showing that North America held more groundwater and lake water during the LGM than it does today – enough to lower sea levels by 14.98 cm. The open-source code is available on GitHub.
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