Regional and local climatic effects on the Dead-Sea evaporation

Abstract

The natural evaporation in the Dead-Sea is a very important meteorological parameter to the local industries at Sdom. It was found that the pan evaporation in Sdom has recently increased by 20–25%. In this paper we explore the reasons for this increase. It is found that both large-scale and local climatic changes have contributed to the evaporation increase in the Dead Sea Valley. The large-scale (global) change potentially associated with the global warming, resulted in changes of the frequencies of some synoptic systems in the region. The local change is a result of the recent Dead-Sea drying, which reduced the local Dead-Sea breeze while intensifying the Mediterranean-Sea breeze penetrating the Dead Sea Valley. It is suggested that while the local effect was the dominant climatic change factor in the Dead-Sea Valley in the 1970–1990, the global effect becomes the dominant one in the more recent evaporation increase in the Dead-Sea.