Abstract
Precipitation patterns' change, rising surface temperature, extensive ice melting and increments in intensity and frequency of droughts and floods are several kinds of the reported hydrologic changes that are connected with the worldwide climate change. Therefore, climate change and its associated precipitation change are anticipated to influence the water storage as well as water supply in Jordan and impose challenges in front of the current water management policies and plans. The hydrological impacts of upcoming anticipated climate may influence the Jordanian dams' capacity and operating attributes. Accordingly, this paper tends to explore and review mainly the effect of precipitation change on dams' storage in Jordan, by providing a brief review of major types of dams and considerations that must be taken through their design and construction as well as clarifying the necessity for a national climate change policy for Jordan. The researcher concluded that climate change and precipitation variability require new management strategies for water storage infrastructures (reservoirs), including the design for new dams and rehabilitation of the infrastructure of aging dams as well as imposing new operational systems. Several advantages of dam management ought to be considered, evaluated and actualized right away in Jordan alongside with issuing of national climate change policy taking into account the effect of precipitation change. DOI : 10.7176/JEES/9-5-05 Publication date :May 31 st 2019
Highlights
In the recent four decades, water quality as well as its availability have become of a high significant concern in Jordan
The accessible water from the current sustainable assets are anticipated by the year 2025, to fall beneath 91 m3/c.d
Water deficiency has enforced Jordan to take care of all accessible water assets in order to overcome any issues among available water supply and demand (Al-Tabbal and Al-Zboon 2012)
Summary
In the recent four decades, water quality as well as its availability have become of a high significant concern in Jordan. Water deficiency has enforced Jordan to take care of all accessible water assets in order to overcome any issues among available water supply and demand (Al-Tabbal and Al-Zboon 2012). In countries such as Jordan, where the severe drought season has an expected impact on climate change and where the access to fresh water rely heavily on upstream countries, the effect of drier conditions and subsequent changes in transboundary water flow have prompted Jordan to address water scarcity more than other problems related to climate variability such as change in precipitation and its effect on dams storage which may lead to floods in some cases (Rajsekhar & Gorelick, 2017). In previous studies such as Freiwan and Kadioglu (2008) where an arithmetical rationalizing model was utilized to create site-scale climate future scenarios for the upcoming period of 2011-2099, at different Jordanian sites from the coarse GCM products, the study show that extreme events including, extreme rainfall, flash floods and rapid snow storms, are anticipated to be more frequent requiring Jordan to pay attention to the problems of absorptive capacity and designed storage of reservoirs and the possibility of flooding in a manner similar to that of water scarcity problems (Jordanian Ministry of Environment, 2013)
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