Understanding the impact of droughts in the Yarmouk Basin, Jordan: monitoring droughts through meteorological and hydrological drought indices (original) (raw)

An Investigation into the Spatial and Temporal Variability of the Meteorological Drought in Jordan

Climate

Following the impact of droughts witnessed during the last decade there is an urgent need to develop a drought management strategy, policy framework, and action plan for Jordan. This study aims to provide a historical baseline using the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and meteorological drought maps, and to investigate the spatial and temporal trends using long-term historical precipitation records. Specifically, this study is based on the statistical analysis of 38 years of monthly rainfall data, gathered from all 29 meteorological stations that cover Jordan. The Mann–Kendall test and linear regression analysis were used to uncover evidence of long-term trends in precipitation. Drought indices were used for calculating the meteorological SPI on an annual (SPI12), 6-months (SPI6), and 3-months basis (SPI3). At each level, every drought event was characterized according to its duration, interval, and intensity. Then, drought maps were generated using interpolation kriging to i...

Characterizing droughts under current and future climates in the Jordan River region

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions, 2013

The Standardized Precipitation-Evaporation Index (SPEI) was applied in order to address the drought conditions under current and future climates in the Jordan River region located in the southeastern Mediterranean area. In the first step, the SPEI was derived from spatially interpolated monthly precipitation and temperature data at multiple timescales: accumulated precipitation and monthly mean temperature were considered over a number of timescalesfor example 1, 3, and 6 months. To investigate the performance of the drought index, correlation analyses were conducted with simulated soil moisture and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) obtained from remote sensing. A comparison with the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), i.e., a drought index that does not incorporate temperature, was also conducted. The results show that the 6month SPEI has the highest correlation with simulated soil moisture and best explains the interannual variation of the monthly NDVI. Hence, a timescale of 6 months is the most appropriate when addressing vegetation growth in the semiarid region. In the second step, the 6-month SPEI was derived from three climate projections based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emission scenario A1B. When comparing the period 2031-2060 with 1961-1990, it is shown that the percentage of time with moderate, severe and extreme drought conditions is projected to increase strongly. To address the impact of drought on the agricultural sector, the irrigation water demand during certain drought years was thereafter simulated with a hydrological model on a spatial resolution of 1 km. A large increase in the demand for irrigation water was simulated, showing that the agricultural sector is expected to become even more vulnerable to drought in the future.

Addressing drought conditions under current and future climates in the Jordan River region

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 2014

Open Access JWARP Characterizing, Monitoring and Forecasting of Drought in Jordan River Basin

2013

Copyright © 2013 Khaldoun Shatanawi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Li-cense, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Jordan is very vulnerable to drought because of its location in the arid to semi-arid part of the Middle East. Droughts coupled with water scarcity are becoming a serious threat to the economic growth, social cohesion and political stability. Rainfall time series from four rain stations covering the Jordan River Basin were analyzed for drought characterization and forecasting using standardized precipitation index (SPI), Markov chain and autoregressive integrated moving aver-age (ARIMA) model. The 7-year moving average of Amman data showed a decreasing trend while data from the other three stations were stable or showed an increasing trend. The frequency analysis indicated 2-year return period for near zero SPI values while the ...

Drought analysis in Jordan under current and future climates

Climatic Change, 2011

Droughts have adverse socioeconomic, agricultural, and environmental impacts that can be reduced by assessing and forecasting drought behavior. The paper presents detailed analyses of both meteorological and vegetative droughts over the period from 1970 to 2005. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) have been used to quantify drought according to severity, magnitude and spatial distribution at the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Results suggest that the country faced during the past 35 years frequent non-uniform drought periods in an irregular repetitive manner. Drought severity, magnitudes and life span increased with time from normal to extreme levels especially at last decade reaching magnitudes of more than 4. Generated NDVI maps spatial analyses estimate crop-area percentage damage due to severe and extremely severe drought events occurred during October, December, and February of 2000 to be about 10%, 45%, and 30%, respectively. In response to drought spatial extent, the paper suggest the presence of two drought types, local drought acting on one or more geographical climatic parts and national drought, of less common but more severe, that extend over the whole country. Droughts in Jordan act intensively during January, February and March and tend to shift position with time by alternative migrations from southern desert parts to northern desert parts and from the eastern desert parts to highlands and Jordan Rift Valley (JRV) at the west. The paper also investigates the potential use of Global Climate Model’s (GCM) to forecast future drought events from 2010 till 2040. Tukey HSD test indicates that ECHAM5OM GCM is capable to predicted rainfall variation at the country and suggests future droughts to become more intensive at the northern and southern desserts with 15% rainfall reduction factor, followed by 10% reduction at the JRV, and 5% at the highlands.

Applicability of a Combined Drought Index to Monitoring Drought in Jordan

2019

Drought is a complex natural hazard with variable patterns and severity that has become a trending phenomenon in all countries across the globe, impacting all sectors negatively. Due tothe importance of drought monitoring and early warning in terms of enhancing drought resilience and preparedness, drought characterization and vulnerability have beeninvestigated repeatedly during the last decade, leading to the development of various drought indices. However, a single drought index may not provide a clear understanding of drought spatial and temporal patterns and the impacts on various sectors; thus, a combination of various indices could provide a key tobetter interpolationand forecasting. The present study explores and evaluates the potential of using a combined drought index (CDI) based onprecipitation (PDI), temperature (TDI), and vegetation (VDI) drought indices, to characterise drought variability and trends in Jordan based on 1-, 2-, 3-, 6-, and 12-month timescales. The CDI wa...

ANALYSIS OF METEOROLOGICAL DROUGHT IN IRAQ USING THE RECONNAISSANCE DROUGHT INDEX (RDI

The drought characteristics were analyzed in Iraq dependent on the observed climate data from ten meteorological stations during 1980-2011. Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) was used to studying and analyzing of droughts. The variable of interest in RDI is precipitation over potential evapotranspiration (ETo), the ETo is calculated using Penman-Monteith method. The results showed that the 2008 year was the worst dry year had passed in all parts of Iraq. It was observed that the maximum severity of drought (Smax) was identified during the periods (2007-2009) for the most stations. The Mild drought (Extremely drought) conditions are the highest (lowest) number of drought event than other conditions for all stations. Most of study region experienced the strongest drought events through the last period from 1999 to 2009 as compared with the previous period.

Characterizing, Monitoring and Forecasting of Drought in Jordan River Basin

Journal of Water Resource and Protection, 2013

Jordan is very vulnerable to drought because of its location in the arid to semi-arid part of the Middle East. Droughts coupled with water scarcity are becoming a serious threat to the economic growth, social cohesion and political stability. Rainfall time series from four rain stations covering the Jordan River Basin were analyzed for drought characterization and forecasting using standardized precipitation index (SPI), Markov chain and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. The 7-year moving average of Amman data showed a decreasing trend while data from the other three stations were stable or showed an increasing trend. The frequency analysis indicated 2-year return period for near zero SPI values while the return period for moderate drought was 7 years. Successive droughts had occurred at least three times during the past 40 years. Severe droughts are expected once every 20-25 year period at all rain stations. The extreme droughts were rare events with return periods between 80 and 115 years. There are equal occurrence probabilities for drought and wet conditions in any given year, irrespective, of the condition in the previous year. The results showed that ARIMA model was successful in predicting the overall statistics with a given period at annual scales. The overall number of predicted/observed droughts during the validation periods were 2/2 severe droughts for Amman station and, 0/1, 1/1, 0/1 extreme droughts for Amman, Irbid and Mafraq stations, respectively. In addition, the ARIMA model also predicted 3 out of 4 actual moderate droughts for Amman and Mafraq stations. It was concluded that early warning of developing droughts can be deduced form the monthly Markov transitional probabilities. ARIMA models can be used as a forecasting tool of the future drought trends. Using the first and second order Markov probabilities can complement the ARIMA predictions.

Regional meteorological drought assessment in Iraq

Arabian Journal of Geosciences, 2020

Regional assessment of drought characteristics provides essential information for water resources management. The study aimed to analyze the regional meteorological drought in Iraq for the period (1970-2013) using monthly rainfall data collected from 22 meteorological stations scattered all over the country. We have used the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI), theory of runs, GIS, and drought severity-area-frequency (SAF) curves to analyze the accumulated deficits, drought duration, severity, and the frequency of each of the drought classes. Results showed that study area suffered from recurrent drought periods, and the severest drought periods were from 1997 to 2001 and from 2007 to 2010. In addition, the majority of the droughts were of the class (mild dry) according to the SPI classification with an occurrence percentage of 33.44%. The highest drought rates characterized the northeastern zone of Iraq compared with other parts of study area in terms of the accumulated deficit of rainfall and drought duration. Results showed that dividing the study area into three homogeneous zones improved the formulation of SAF curves and made it more realistic. The return periods of the dry years within the study period ranged from 2 to 100 years and for the three zones of the study area.

Analysis of Historical Precipitation in Semi-Arid Areas – Case Study of Amman Zarqa Basin

Journal of Ecological Engineering

Climate change is determined as a severe threat to water resource availability in Semi-Arid Areas. Therefore, it is crucial to examine the drought trends to develop and sustain water resources. This study evaluates the effects of climate change in Jordan by investigating the long-term precipitation trends in the Amman Zarqa Basin over the water from 1971 to 2016. Daily precipitation data were gathered to analyze different rainfall stations over and around the basin.. The standardized precipitation index (SPI) variations were investigated at monthly intervals. Control charts, hypothesis testing, T-test, differences of variances, and trend analysis were used to determine climatic trends. The analysis results showed that 2003 marks an acceleration point in the precipitation decrease rate; therefore, the SPI showed a decrease and a high DI for the area in the tested year 2005 and 2010 to be a mild drought in the following years. Additionally, a change in the precipitation pattern was observed as seasonal precipitation contribution varied for the pre-2003 period compared to the post-2003 period. The SPI results show that 1995 reflects the higher drought periods, and the following years showed mild drought events; nevertheless, the year 2016 displayed lower drought events, reflecting wet events.

Understanding the impact of droughts in the Yarmouk Basin, Jordan: monitoring droughts through meteorological and hydrological drought indices (original) (raw)

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