Determination of the changes of drought occurrence in Middle East and North Africa using regional climate modeling

Abstract

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has many nations which are among the most vulnerable to drought and any possible reduction in precipi tation. Along with the growing populations in the region, the need for freshwater both for domestic and agricultural uses increase tremendously. However, with the unprecedented CO2 increase in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, the climate of the Earth is changing and MENA region is foreseen to face even worse problems in terms of lack of freshwater. This study is aimed to determine the future changes of the intensity and frequency of drought occurrences and to provide an early warning system for the countries in the region to better prepare for the possible severe drought conditions. Therefore, firstly the outputs of the MPI-ESM-MR global climate model of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology are downscaled to 50km for the MENA region by using the Regional Climate Model (RegCM4.4) of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). To make the future projections for the period 2071-2100 with respect to the 1971-2000 reference period, the worst case emission scenario RCP8.5 is used. Thereafter, the two most useful indices in terms of drought probabilities, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) values are calculated to create the spatial distribution maps, which show the changes of drought probabilities.