Meteorological factors affecting the sudden decline in Lake Urmia’s water level

Untangling global change impacts on hydrological processes: Resisting climatization

“…• "climate change and extreme weather drive the declines of saline lakes" (Meng, 2019) • "consumptive water use rather than long-term climate change has greatly reduced its size" (Wurtsbaugh et al, 2017) Lake Kinneret • "The loss of available water of about 110 million m 3 yr -1 (about 6.5% of the national water consumption in Israel) is shown to be caused by a decreasing trend in the factor of precipitation enhancement by uplifting on topographic barriers" (Givati & Rosenfeld, 2007) • "Since extraction has been higher than natural and artificial recharge, water reserves in Lake Kinneret and in aquifers were gradually depleted" (Inbar & Bruins, 2004) • "orographic precipitation has been suppressed over Israel" (Givati & Rosenfeld, 2009) • "Climatic factors alone are inadequate to explain the record shrinkage of the Sea of Galilee" • "Climate change expression in the northern Kinneret drainage region is precipitation decline and headwater rivers decline of discharge" (Gophen, 2019) • "the drivers of the Kinneret's shrinkage are primarily anthropogenic" (Wine, 2019c) • "climate change, and the associated reduced rainfall, that is responsible for the Lake Kinneret's reduced inflow" (Tal, 2019b) • "Attribution of Lake Kinneret's shrinkage primarily to human influences is in keeping with conclusions regarding inland water bodies globally" (Wine, 2019b) • "climate change driven depletion of Lake Kinneret" (Tal, 2019a) • "prioritize over-abstraction in pursuit of near term economic goals over sustainable policies that would protect the environment" (Wine, 2019d) Lake Urmia • "precipitation has played an important role in the documented decline of the lake" (Arkian, Nicholson, & Ziaie, 2018) • "agricultural increase of vegetation cover in the watershed correlates well with the lake water level change" (Khazaei et al, 2019) • "streamflow in Urmia Lake basin is more sensitive to changes in temperature than precipitation" (Fathian, Morid, & Kahya, 2014) • "irrigation was by far the main driving force for river flow regime changes in the lake basin" (Fazel et al, 2017) • "streamflow in Urmia Lake basin is more sensitive to changes in temperature than those of precipitation" (Fathian, Dehghan, Bazrkar, & Eslamian, 2016) • "Drastic changes to lake health are primarily consequences of aggressive regional water resources development plans, intensive agricultural activities, anthropogenic changes to the system, and upstream competition over water" (AghaKouchak, Norouzi, et al, 2015) 2018; Wine, Rimmer, & Laronne, 2019;Wurtsbaugh et al, 2017).…”

Preserving Urmia Lake in a changing world : reconciling anthropogenic and climate drivers by hydrological modelling and policy assessment

“…Forty-one small and large reservoirs have been built in the basin since 1970 (Figure 1-1), storing around 2000×10 6 m 3 water and about 510,000 ha of irrigated land in the basin with 33 modern and traditional irrigation networks. There has also been a significant decrease in precipitation and an increasing trend in the average maximum temperature in the same period (Fathian et al, 2014, Delju et al, 2013 which has caused the basin climate classification to change from semi-arid climate to arid (Arkian et al, 2016). These changes in the basin climate have caused the most extreme droughts in the basin over the last few decades during the mid-1990s (Tabari et al, 2013).…”

“…This is caused by a relatively low runoff coefficient which makes the basin vulnerable to fluctuation in precipitation. Furthermore, the seasonal and inter-annual variability of precipitation have also changed significantly over the last two decades (Delju et al, 2013) and less rainy days have been reported (Arkian et al, 2016). These longer dry periods encouraged increased anthropogenic water extraction.…”

“…Therefore, this study regionalized and applied VIC irrigation and reservoirs modulus to do an integrated assessment of the combined and individual impact of climate variabilities and change, and agricultural water resources management on a regional scale (Chapter 2 and 3). This study presented a more robust approach from the previous studies, which assessed only climate variabilities data like annual precipitation (AghaKouchak et al, 2015Arkian et al, 2016, Fathian et al, 2014 by addressing indirect climate impacts. By applying the integrated approach, this study showed that the water resources plans are not robust enough for the strong climate changes.…”

“…Impact assessments that do not account for interactions between influential sectors have the potential to misrepresent impacts as one factor can have indirect effects in others. For example, the impact of changing interannual climate variability, which caused longer dry periods in Urmia basin (Arkian et al, 2016, Harrison et al, 2016 can encourage increased water extractions. The study also created an even more complete or holistic picture by combining the scenario-based quantitative assessment with a qualitative assessment.…”