Atmospheric Rivers and Precipitation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
1
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
2
Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Arts and Science, University of Balamand Dubai, Dubai, UAE
3
Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
4
School of Engineering, University of California Merced, Merced, CA 95343, USA
5
Geosciences and Environment, California State University, Los Angeles, CA 90032, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Water 2020, 12(10), 2863; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12102863
Received: 17 August 2020 / Revised: 9 October 2020 / Accepted: 12 October 2020 / Published: 14 October 2020
(This article belongs to the Section Hydrology and Hydrogeology)
This study investigates the historical climatology and future projected change of atmospheric rivers (ARs) and precipitation for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. We use a suite of models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5, historical and RCP8.5 scenarios) and other observations to estimate AR frequency and mean daily precipitation. Despite its arid-to-semi-arid climate, parts of the MENA region experience strong ARs, which contribute a large fraction of the annual precipitation, such as in the mountainous areas of Turkey and Iran. This study shows that by the end of this century, AR frequency is projected to increase (~20–40%) for the North Africa and Mediterranean areas (including any region with higher latitudes than 35 N). However, for these regions, mean daily precipitation (i.e., regardless of the presence of ARs) is projected to decrease (~15–30%). For the rest of the MENA region, including the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, minor changes in AR frequency (±10%) are expected, yet mean precipitation is projected to increase (~50%) for these regions. Overall, the projected sign of change in AR frequency is opposite to the projected sign of change in mean daily precipitation for most areas within the MENA region.
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Keywords:
climate change; precipitation; atmospheric rivers; Middle East; North Africa
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Massoud, E.; Massoud, T.; Guan, B.; Sengupta, A.; Espinoza, V.; De Luna, M.; Raymond, C.; Waliser, D. Atmospheric Rivers and Precipitation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Water 2020, 12, 2863.
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