Assessing the Spatio-temporal Variability of Meteorological Drought in Jordan

Abstract

In the last decade, severe drought impacts have been witnessed in Jordan and there is an immense need to develop drought management strategy and policy framework to tackle this problem. This study aimed to investigate the spatio-temporal variability of precipitation based on long-term data using Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) to assess the trend and intensity of drought in Jordan. In this context, the data of 29 meteorological stations of the last 37 years have been obtained from Jordan Meteorological Department. SPI-3, SPI-6 and SPI-12 have been calculated to assess short- and long-term drought events, and Mann–Kendall and linear regression tests were applied to detect the drought trend in the study region. Drought of varying duration and intensity was detected at each time scale (3-, 6-, and 12-month SPI) as well as at each meteorological station. The SPI results show that Jordan faces an increasing frequency of drought with a probability of occurrence once in every 2 or 3 years. On contrary to this, long-term drought occurs in whole country once in every 15–20 years which have more than 2-year consecutive duration. The Mann–Kendall test result shows significant temporal decrease in the amount of precipitation at all meteorological stations except Madaba. The results of linear regression test indicate significant increase in magnitude of drought with the rate 0.02/annum with a significance of 0.0001 using SPI values. This study concluded that there is an increasing drought trend and the situation will become more severe in future as the amount of rainfall is decreasing gradually in Jordan.