Abstract
Investigating the spatiotemporal distribution of climate data and their impact on the allocation of the regional aridity and meteorological drought, particularly in semi-arid and arid climate, it is critical to evaluate the climate variability effect and propose sufficient adaptation strategies. The coefficient of variation, precipitation concentration index and anomaly index were used to evaluate the climate variability, while the Mann-Kendall and Sen’s slope were applied for trend analysis, together with homogeneity tests. The aridity was evaluated using the alpha form of the reconnaissance drought index (Mohammed & Scholz, Water Resour Manag 31(1):531–538, 2017c), whereas drought episodes were predicted by applying three of the commonly used meteorological drought indices, which are the standardised reconnaissance drought index, standardized precipitation index and standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index. The Upper Zab River Basin (UZRB), which is located in the northern part of Iraq and covers a high range of climate variability, has been considered as an illustrative basin for arid and semi-arid climatic conditions. There were general increasing trends in average temperature and potential evapotranspiration and decreasing trends in precipitation from the upstream to the downstream of the UZRB. The long-term analysis of climate data indicates that the number of dry years has temporally risen and the basin has experienced succeeding years of drought, particularly after 1994/1995. There was a potential link between drought, aridity and climate variability. Pettitt’s, SNHT, Buishand’s and von Neumann’s homogeneity test results demonstrated that there is an evident alteration in the mean of the drought and aridity between the pre- and post-alteration point (1994).
Highlights
Research on long-term variations in meteorological data is important to identify climate change and variability as well as human-induced water resources management impacts (Mohammed and Scholz 2017b, 2018; Yue et al 2018)
Due to climate change impact and anthropogenic intervention, temporal and areal meteorological parameters would mostly vary in the long-term and cause alterations in the local and global hydrological cycle
Precipitation and temperature are key parameters to describe the climate over all scales
Summary
Research on long-term variations in meteorological data is important to identify climate change and variability as well as human-induced water resources management impacts (Mohammed and Scholz 2017b, 2018; Yue et al 2018). Due to climate change impact and anthropogenic intervention, temporal and areal meteorological parameters would mostly vary in the long-term and cause alterations in the local and global hydrological cycle. Precipitation and temperature are key parameters to describe the climate over all scales (from local to global). The evapotranspiration variable is usually involved in water balance research. It can be considered as a more expressive variable for substituting temperature in water resources management (Mohammed and Scholz 2017a). Analysis of long time series concerning temperature, precipitation and potential evapotranspiration for an area may produce one of the following collections: + + +, + + 0, + + −, +0+, +00, + 0 −, + − +, + − 0, + − −, − + +, − + 0,− + −,− 0 +, − 0 0, − 0 −, − − +, − −0, − − −, where +, − and 0 represents a rise, a decline, and no change, respectively
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