​A new research paper evaluating models for estimating groundwater recharge has been released in the Journal of Hydrology. The study analyses data from 10 different European countries, including Ireland.

Three different models for estimating groundwater recharge are evaluated using 78 groundwater head time series in varying hydrogeological settings. Time series analysis and lumped modelling is an excellent method of estimating groundwater recharge. However, variations can arise between models based on groundwater levels and outputs can be influenced by local climate and hydrogeological factors. Results show that all models did well, but displayed a large spread in estimations. Models where water balance information was included performed the best. The full article is available here.