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Meteorological drought duration–severity and climate change impact in Iran

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Abstract

This study investigated the effect of climate change on future precipitation and temperature from 2021 to 2050. Three general circulation models (GCMs), namely GFDL-ESM2M, HadGEM2-ES, and IPSL-CM5A-LR, and two greenhouse emission scenarios, RCP2.6 and RCP8.5, were analyzed for this purpose. The CCT model, precipitation data, and minimum and maximum daily temperatures (from 1986 to 2019) were used for downscaling and correcting precipitation and daily temperature bias. According to the results, the weighted annual precipitation recorded in rain-gauge stations was ascending in all scenarios, except for RCP8.5 in the IPSL-CM5A-LR model. The mean weighted precipitation rate of rain-gauge stations in winter did not descend under any climate change conditions, but the precipitation rate decreased or increased in other seasons. The highest increase of 23 mm in the weighted mean precipitation in winter was calculated under the RCP2.6 scenario in the GFDL-ESM2M model. The highest decrease of 10.5 mm in the weighted mean precipitation was observed in autumn. No temperature decline occurred in meteorological stations. The highest increase of 3.1 °C in the weighted mean temperature and the highest seasonal temperature rise of 8.5 °C were observed in summer under the RCP8.5 scenario in the HadGEM2-ES model. According to the standardized precipitation index (SPI), almost 70% of the future 30-year period are dry years, and drought occurs in almost all scenarios in all Iranian watersheds from 2030 to 2040. Given severe long droughts (14 years), Iran needs a comprehensive management plan and a long-term vision of managers and authorities for water resources.

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Data availability

All data are available on https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip6/.

Code availability

The code used during the current study are not publicly available due to further targets and future publications but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their very great appreciation to the international community providing the global data for the analysis in this article and also to the anonymous reviewers, who helped to improve the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Water Engineering, College of Abouraihan, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Farhad Behzadi, Saman Javadi & S. Mehdy Hashemy Shahedany

  2. Department of Water and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Civil, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

    Hossein Yousefi & Ali Moridi

  3. Department of GIS/RS, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

    Aminreza Neshat

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  1. Farhad Behzadi
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Contributions

The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception and design: A. M., S. J.; data collection: F. B., H. Y.; analysis and interpretation of results: H. Y., S. M. H. S.; draft manuscript preparation: F. B., H. Y., A. N. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Saman Javadi.

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Behzadi, F., Yousefi, H., Javadi, S. et al. Meteorological drought duration–severity and climate change impact in Iran. Theor Appl Climatol 149, 1297–1315 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-022-04113-5

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