In this study, we evaluate the past, present and future quantity of groundwater potentially available for drinking purposes in the metropolitan area of Turin, north-western Italy. In order to effectively manage water resources, a knowledge of the water cycle components is necessary, including precipitation, evapotranspiration and subsurface reservoirs. All these components have been carefully evaluated in this paper, using observational datasets and modelling approaches.

The key to gaining information on climate over the last millennia is the study of proxy records in ice and sediment cores, trees, etc. We measured the oxygen isotopic ratio in planktonic foraminifera of a high-resolution, well-dated central Mediterranean core. The comparison between the variability detected in this core and that characterizing the Northern Hemisphere allows for local and global (hemispheric) climate variations to be distinguished.