Family Farming Knowledge Platform

Drought changes over last five decades in Syria

Mediterranean basin is one of the most prominent hot spot of climate change in the world. Further, extreme climatic events such as drought are expected to become more frequent and intense in this region. To evaluate seasonal and annual droughts, Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) was computed for 15 meteorological stations covering different climatic zones during the last five decades in Syria. Drought intensity and dry spells were calculated by using the Effective Drought Index (EDI), which depends in its calculation on the daily values of effective rainfall during growing season, in 11 stations during the period 1968-2008. Mann-Kendall test was used to detect any monotonic trend in SPI values, whereas Regime Shift Index (RSI) was applied to determine the years of changes. The results showed negative trends which were statistically significant (p = 0.05 and p = 0.01) only for some stations by the Mann-Kendall test, but significant negative step changes were detected by Regime Shift Index (RSI) in annual SPI values for all regions. The study on drought duration using EDI showed a positive trend in dry days number, and dry spells seemed to be longer.

Title of publication: Options Méditerranéennes : Série A. Séminaires Méditerranéens;
:
Issue: 95
:
Page range: 107-112
:
:
:
:
:
Author: Skaf M.
Other authors: Mathbout S.
:
:
Year: 2010
:
Country/ies: Syrian Arab Republic
Geographical coverage: Near East and North Africa
Type: Journal article
Content language: English
:

Share this page