The survey of climatic drought trend in Iran

• Published in: Stochastic environmental research and risk assessment Vol. 25; no. 6; pp. 851 - 863
• Main Authors: Bari Abarghouei, Hossein, Asadi Zarch, Mohammad Amin, Dastorani, Mohammad Taghi, Kousari, Mohammad Reza, Safari Zarch, Mehdi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer-Verlag 01.08.2011; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Aquatic Pollution; Chemistry and Earth Sciences; Climate change; Computational Intelligence; Computer Science; Drought; Droughts; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Ecological risk assessment; Environment; Math. Appl. in Environmental Science; Meteorology; Monitoring; Original Paper; Physics; Precipitation; Probability Theory and Stochastic Processes; Stations; Statistical methods; Statistical tests; Statistics for Engineering; Time series; Trends; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; Iran; ISW, Iran; Eurasia, Caspian Sea; Climate; Survey; Standardized Precipitation Index; Drought
• ISSN: 1436-3240; 1436-3259
• DOI: 10.1007/s00477-011-0491-7

Drought is one of the most important natural hazards in Iran. Therefore, drought monitoring has become a point of concern for most of the researchers. In the present study, the changes and trend of drought was surveyed, under the current global climate changes, by non parametric Mann–Kendall statistical test for 42 synoptic stations at different places of Iran. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) was calculated to recognize the drought condition at different time scales (3, 6, 9, 12, 18 and 24 months’ time series) for analyzing the drought trend in the recent 30 years. The obtained results have indicated a significant negative trend of drought in many parts of Iran, especially the South-East, West and South-West regions of the country. According to the results, although some parts of Iran such as North (around the Caspian Sea) and Northeast show no significant trend but in other parts of country, the severity of drought has increased during the last 30 years.