Buffering the impacts of extreme climate variability in the highly engineered Tigris Euphrates river system

Karem Abdelmohsen,Eugene Yan,Khaled H Zahran,Himanshu Save,Abotalib Z Abotalib,Mohamed Sultan

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-07891-0

Abstract

More extreme and prolonged floods and droughts, commonly attributed to global warming, are affecting the livelihood of major sectors of the world’s population in many basins worldwide. While these events could introduce devastating socioeconomic impacts, highly engineered systems are better prepared for modulating these extreme climatic variabilities. Herein, we provide methodologies to assess the effectiveness of reservoirs in managing extreme floods and droughts and modulating their impacts in data-scarce river basins. Our analysis of multiple satellite missions and global land surface models over the Tigris-Euphrates Watershed (TEW; 30 dams; storage capacity: 250 km3), showed a prolonged (2007–2018) and intense drought (Average Annual Precipitation [AAP]: < 400 km3) with no parallels in the past 100 years (AAP during 1920–2020: 538 km3) followed by 1-in-100-year extensive precipitation event (726 km3) and an impressive recovery (113 ± 11 km3) in 2019 amounting to 50% of losses endured during drought years. Dam reservoirs captured water equivalent to 40% of those losses in that year. Additional studies are required to investigate whether similar highly engineered watersheds with multi-year, high storage capacity can potentially modulate the impact of projected global warming-related increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall and drought events in the twenty-first century.

Highlights

The a 100-year extreme precipitation event (AAP) for a particular period hereafter refers to the total seasonal precipitation throughout the investigated period averaged over the TEW area
The first is the GRACE CSR-RL06M solutions provided by the University of Texas Center for Space Research (UT-CSR); the data provided are oversampled on an equiangular grid of size (0.25° × 0.25°)[77]
The GRACETWS and the GPCC time series were correlated to examine whether extreme seasonal precipitation events could have given rise to anomalously high GRACETWS values over the TEW

Summary

Introduction

The AAP for a particular period hereafter refers to the total seasonal precipitation throughout the investigated period averaged over the TEW area. The GRACETWS and the GPCC time series were correlated to examine whether extreme seasonal precipitation events could have given rise to anomalously high GRACETWS values over the TEW.

Results

Conclusion