First super-high-resolution model projection that the ancient "Fertile Crescent" will disappear in this century

Kitoh, Akio; Yatagai, Akiyo; Alpert, Pinhas

doi:10.3178/hrl.2.1

Cited by 99 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Kitoh et al 2008;Evans 2009). The resultant reduction in available water is likely to have devastating consequences for the people of the Middle East-many of whom already live in conditions of water poverty.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Past, present and future precipitation in the Middle East: insights from models and observations

Black

Brayshaw

Rambeau

2010

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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Anthropogenic changes in precipitation pose a serious threat to society-particularly in regions such as the Middle East that already face serious water shortages. However, climate model projections of regional precipitation remain highly uncertain. Moreover, standard resolution climate models have particular difficulty representing precipitation in the Middle East, which is modulated by complex topography, inland water bodies and proximity to the Mediterranean Sea. Here we compare precipitation changes over the twenty-first century against both millennial variability during the Holocene and interannual variability in the present day. In order to assess the climate model and to make consistent comparisons, this study uses new regional climate model simulations of the past, present and future in conjunction with proxy and historical observations. We show that the pattern of precipitation change within Europe and the Middle East projected by the end of the twenty-first century has some similarities to that which occurred during the Holocene. In both cases, a poleward shift of the North Atlantic storm track and a weakening of the Mediterranean storm track appear to cause decreased winter rainfall in southern Europe and the Middle East and increased rainfall further north. In contrast, on an interannual time scale, anomalously dry seasons in the Middle East are associated with a strengthening and focusing of the storm track in the north Mediterranean and hence wet conditions throughout southern Europe.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Past, present and future precipitation in the Middle East: insights from models and observations

Black

Brayshaw

Rambeau

2010

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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“…They found an increase in the Autumn rainfall which was associated with an increase in the southerly wind in agreement with Evans [11]. Kitoh et al [13] used a high resolution global model to investigate future climate changes in the Middle East finding a general decrease in annual precipitation in the Fertile Crescent though they did not investigate the changes at higher temporal resolution. This paper investigates the role played by the Zagros mountains barrier jet in producing the Fertile Crescent changes found in Evans [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 57%

The Importance of the Zagros Mountains Barrier Jet to Future Precipitation in the Fertile Crescent

Evans¹,

Alsamawi²

2011

TOASCJ

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This study quantifies the significance of southerly water vapour fluxes, associated with the Zagros Mountains barrier jet, on precipitation occurring in the Eastern Fertile Crescent region and its change due to global warming. Precipitation events are simulated using a Regional Climate Model (MM5-Noah) driven by boundary conditions from a CCSM global climate model simulation with the SRES A2 emission scenario. The precipitation events were grouped into classes based on the similarity of their water vapour fluxes. Results show a massive increase in the southerly dominated classes which are associated with the formation of a barrier jet on the western slopes of the Zagros Mountains. This increase was related to an increase in atmospheric water vapour in the southern portion of the domain rather than to an increase in the frequency of formation or wind speed of the barrier jet itself. The presence of this barrier jet becomes increasingly important to precipitation in the Eastern Fertile Crescent region as global warming progresses. Thus, low resolution models that are unable to capture this phenomena will produce questionable future projections for this region.

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“…So that we can easily regrid from this fine-resolution interval to other grid intervals as needed. For example, we used our climatology product to validate the MRI's 20-km mesh GCM simulation result by interpolating the product onto the model grid (Yatagai et al, , 2006Kitoh et al, 2008). Applications of this data set are reported in other places.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent climatological models project that the East Mediterranean/Mid-East will have less rainfall and lower river discharge owing to global warming (Milly et al, 2005;Nohara et al, 2006, Kitoh et al, 2008. Many attempts have been made to estimate the impact of global warming on hydrological resources and agricultural production systems over these regions (Kimura, 2005, Alpert et al, 2006) Climate model resolution is improving, with the ultimate goal being to project the impact of global warming on local environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a daily gridded precipitation data set for the Middle East

2008

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Abstract.We show an algorithm to construct a rain-gaugebased analysis of daily precipitation for the Middle East. One of the key points of our algorithm is to construct an accurate distribution of climatology. One possible advantage of this product is to validate high-resolution climate models and/or to diagnose the impact of climate changes on local hydrological resources. Many users are familiar with a monthly precipitation dataset (New et al., 1999) and a satellite-based daily precipitation dataset (Huffman et al., 2001), yet our data set, unlike theirs, clearly shows the effect of orography on daily precipitation and other extreme events, especially over the Fertile Crescent region. Currently the Middle-East precipitation analysis product is consisting of a 25-year data set for 1979-2003 based on more than 1300 stations.

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First super-high-resolution model projection that the ancient "Fertile Crescent" will disappear in this century

Cited by 99 publications

References 13 publications

Past, present and future precipitation in the Middle East: insights from models and observations

Past, present and future precipitation in the Middle East: insights from models and observations

The Importance of the Zagros Mountains Barrier Jet to Future Precipitation in the Fertile Crescent

Development of a daily gridded precipitation data set for the Middle East

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