Climate change may boost Middle East rainfall

By Bob Beale
August 14, 2008

The prospect of climate change sparking food shortages and water wars in the Middle East is less likely than previously thought, with new UNSW research suggesting that rainfall will be significantly higher in key parts of the region.

Recent projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) raised fears that storm activity in the eastern Mediterranean would decline this century if global warming continues on present trends. In turn, that would have reduced rainfall by between 15 and 25 per cent over a large part of the so-called Fertile Crescent.

This is land encompassing parts of Turkey, Syria, northern Iraq, and north-eastern Iran and the strategically important headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

When UNSW Climate Change Research Centre researcher Dr Jason Evans analysed the IPPC projections, he found that the region's agricultural base faced significant challenges as a result. About 170,000 square kilometres of viable rain-fed agricultural land would be lost; a longer dry season would limit grazing on rangelands; and changes in the timing of maximum rainfall would force farmers in northern Iran to change cropping strategies and even crop types.

But the IPCC projections were based on the results of global modelling of climate change, which tends to obscure smaller-scale regional effects.

"The global models are good for investigating what's likely to happen on a planetary scale but the resolution is quite coarse when looking at a more localised regional scale," Dr Evans explains. "It's a bit like enlarging a digital photograph until it becomes pixellated and all sorts of detail is blurred out.

"Simulating the climate of the region is a challenge for climate models, due in part to the high natural inter-annual variability, the topography of the region - which includes multiple mountain ranges and inland seas - and the presence of a slight cooling trend in recent decades despite the global trend being a warming."

So in a second far more detailed study, Dr Evans used regional climate modelling specific to the Middle East, and the result was very different.

It emerged that while storm activity over the eastern Mediterranean would indeed decline, moisture-bearing winds would be channelled inland more often and diverted by the Zagros Mountains, bringing an increase of over 50% in annual rainfall to the Euphrates-Tigris watershed.

"A 50 per cent increase in rainfall in such an important agricultural area is certainly a more hopeful scenario than a 15 per cent decline," says Dr Evans.

Media contacts:
Jason Evans - office: 02 9385 7066
Faculty media liaison: Bob Beale - mobile 0411 705 435

Funding: This research was carried out with support from NASA.

Latest news

Announcing the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014
06 May 2013
To mark the centenary of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition led by the great scientist and explorer Sir Douglas Mawson, Professor Chris Turney and Dr Chris Fogwill of the CCRC are leading a privately-funded voyage of discovery to the Antarctic during the Austral summer of 2013-2014.

New website will let you Adrift away
24 April 2013
Dr Erik Van Sebille along with David Fuchs and Jack Murray has created a new website, Adrift, which allows visitors to track the path of flotsam for the next 10 years from almost any place by the ocean.

Last 100 years reverse 1400 years of global cooling
22 April 2013
The first continental-scale reconstruction of temperatures over the past 2000 years by 78 scientists from 24 countries has highlighted the unusual nature of the 20th century warming.

More news...

The Copenhagen Diagnosis

On 25th November 2009 members of The Climate Change Research Centre, as part of a group of 26 international climate scientists, were part of a major international release of a new report synthesizing the latest climate research to emerge since the last IPCC Assessment Report of 2007.

The Big Engine 2: oceans and weather

Federation Fellow and 2008 Eureka Prize winner, Professor Matthew England of CCRC, on the latest research into the role oceans play on weather.

The Science of Climate Change: Questions and Answers

Co-authored by Professor Steven Sherwood and Professor Matt England of CCRC, this Academy of Science report aims to summarise and clarify the current understanding of the science of climate change for non-specialist readers.

The Big Engine 1: oceans and weather

Federation Fellow and 2008 Eureka Prize winner, Professor Matthew England of CCRC, on the latest research into the role oceans play on weather.

New insights into the climate of the past 2,000 years

A comprehensive new scientific study has revealed fresh insights into the climate of the past 2,000 years, providing further evidence that the 20th century warming was not a natural phenomenon. After 1900, increasing temperatures reversed a previous long-term cooling trend. This 20th Century warming has occurred simultaneously in all regions except Antarctica.

The dynamics of the global ocean circulation

The ocean is far from a stagnant body of water. Instead, it is constantly in motion, at speeds from a few centimetres per second to two metres per second in the most vigorous currents.

Leave the ocean garbage alone: we need to stop polluting first

Recent plans to clean plastics from the five massive ocean garbage patches could do more damage to the environment than leaving the plastic right where it is.

Charting the garbage patches of the sea

Just how much plastic is there floating around in our oceans? Dr Erik van Sebille from UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre has completed a study of ocean "garbage patches", and has found that in some regions the amount of plastic outweighs that of marine life.

Share | |