Ongoing Projects

Summary:

Climate change is bound to dramatically impact Middle Eastern regions as the UAE, already dominated by semi-arid to desert climates and water resources scarcity. However, if future climate projections all indicate a decrease of average annual precipitation and runoff across the North of Middle Eastern Regions and a significant wetting of the South, the magnitude, sign and the spatial distribution of such variations strongly differ through the predictions of different atmospheric circulation models. This fact is essentially due to major uncertainties in reproducing (a) complex large scale climatic processes such as the Monsoonal circulation, (b) the highly clustered and intermittent structure of precipitation patterns at the fine-scales, (c) cross-scale couplings between synoptic scale meteorological systems and hydrological processes at the fine scales, and (d) local water and energy fluxes between arid/desert areas and the atmosphere. The primarily goal of this research project is therefore to investigate the space-time variability of the Middle Eastern water resources both at regional- and local- (hydrological) scales and to untangle possible tele-connections between such variability and large (synoptic) scale atmospheric oscillations/circulations (such as NAO, ENSO, IOD and the Asian and African Monsoon). The knowledge acquired on such large-, fine- and cross-scale linkages will be then integrated in a multi-scale diagnostic model of water availability over Middle Eastern regions. Additionally, given the major role of Global Circulation Models (GCMs) projections in the development of previous objectives, the project also aims to provide an assessment of how the different GCMs and Re-analyses perform in parameterizing land surface processes in the challenging arid environments by experimental campaigns with intensive observing periods (IOPs). The overall goal is then to improve the accuracy of future water availability scenarios over arid areas, by progressing in the understanding of (a) existing connections between large-scale complex atmospheric processes and the distribution of precipitation at regional and fine scales, (b) the multi-scale dynamics of precipitation, and (c) the presently mainly unexplored land surface processes (i.e. fluxes of energy and water) over arid areas.