The Water Authority’s director of hydrology has called on planners and officials involved in urban development to prepare for a little-talked-about consequence of climate change that is already showing up in underground parking lots: rising groundwater.

Yakov Livshitz has documented groundwater intrusion into parking lots in the Tel Aviv neighborhoods of Bavli, Ramat Hahayal, and the old north district near Basel Square.

Rising temperatures, largely driven by human burning of fossil fuels, are causing Earth’s ice to melt and sea levels to rise. In Israel, where the Mediterranean Sea is closed in on nearly all sides, that process is happening faster than the global average.

The Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research Institute, which has been monitoring sea levels since 1992, has registered an average increase of 4.6 millimeters (0.18 inches) per year, compared with a global annual rise of 3.25 millimeters (0.13 inches).

As sea levels rise and rain-fed groundwater is depleted by pumping for human needs, seawater encroaches further inland. Because seawater is heavier than freshwater, it slides under the freshwater like a wedge, pushing the groundwater and the water table upwards.

In October 2024, the Water Authority published a report by Livshitz on the impact of three sea-level rise scenarios on locations at varying distances from the Mediterranean Sea along the coastal plain. The scenarios, developed by the Environmental Protection Ministry, were for sea level rises of 57 centimeters (22.4 inches), 80 centimeters (31.5 inches), and 91 centimeters (35.8 inches) by the year 2100.

The research predicted a........

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