The Global Contribution of Individual Submarine Groundwater Discharge Components to the Ocean
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Geophysical Research Letters
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Saline submarine groundwater discharge (SSGD) contributes to ocean chemistry through water-rock interactions as seawater circulates in coastal aquifers. Its components, driven by different mechanisms, exhibit varying residence times and degrees of chemical alteration, so constraining solute fluxes requires quantifying each component. We estimated global density-driven and tidally driven SSGD and solute fluxes using numerical modeling and geospatial data. The modeled global fluxes of density-driven circulation, nearshore tidal circulation, and tidal pumping are 23 (3–219) km3/yr, 254 (173–275) km3/yr, and 388 (179–1,032) km3/yr, respectively. Groundwater flow models often underestimate density-driven circulation because aquifer heterogeneity creates complex salinity distributions that can increase fluxes by orders of magnitude. Accounting for heterogeneity and hydraulic conductivity uncertainty, the revised estimate for density-driven circulation is 523 (181–1,705) km3/yr, comparable to the total tidal-driven SGD. This water flux delivers ∼3 Tmol/yr Ca2+ to the ocean, a significant fraction of the global riverine calcium input.
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This article was originally published in Geophysical Research Letters. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1029/2026GL122723
© 2026. The Author(s).This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐Non Commercial‐No Derivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is noncommercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
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Levy,Y.,Michael,H.A.,Sahu,S.,&Kiro, Y.(2026).The global contributionof individua lsubmarine groundwater discharge components to the ocean. Geophysical Research Letters,53, e2026GL122723. https://doi.org/10.1029/2026GL122723
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Except where otherwised noted, this item's license is described as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 United States