Drought trends projection under future climate change scenarios for Iran region

RESEARCH ARTICLE Drought trends projection under future climate change scenarios for Iran region Maryam Bayatavrkeshi1, Monzur Alam Imteaz2, Ozgur Kisi3,4, Mohammad Farahani5, Mohammad Ghabaei6, Ahmed Mohammed Sami Al-Janabi7, Bassim Mohammed Hashim8, Baqer Al-Ramadan9,10, Zaher Mundher YaseenID11,12* 1 Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, 2 Civil and Construction Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, 3 Department of Civil Engineering, Luebeck University of Applied Sciences, Lu¨beck, Germany, 4 Department of Civil Engineering, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia, 5 Department of Soil Science, Malayer University, Malayer, Iran, 6 Ministry of Energy, Iran Water Resources Management Co., Tehran, Iran, 7 Department of Civil Engineering, Cihan University-Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq, 8 Environment, Water and Renewable Energy Directorate, Ministry of Science and Technology, Baghdad, Iraq, 9 Architecture & City Design Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 10 Interdisciplinary Research Center for Smart Mobility and Logistics, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 11 Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 12 Interdisciplinary Research Center for Membranes and Water Security, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia * z.yaseen@kfupm.edu.sa, zaheryaseen88@gmail.com Abstract

The study highlights the potential characteristics of droughts under future climate change scenarios. For this purpose, the changes in Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) under the A1B, A2, and B1 climate change scenarios in Iran were assessed. The daily weather data of 30 synoptic stations from 1992 to 2010 were analyzed. The HadCM3 statistical model in the LARS-WG was used to predict the future weather condi- tions between 2011 and 2112, for three 34-year periods; 2011–2045, 2046–2079, and 2080–2112. In regard to the findings, the upward trend of the potential evapotranspiration in parallel with the downward trend of the precipitation in the next 102 years in three scenarios to the base timescale was transparent. The frequency of the SPEI in the base month indi- cated that 17.02% of the studied months faced the drought. Considering the scenarios of cli- mate change for three 34-year periods (i.e., 2011–2045, 2046–2079, and 2080–2112) the average percentages of potential drought occurrences for all the stations in the next three periods will be 8.89, 16.58, and 27.27 respectively under the B1 scenario. While the pre- dicted values under the A1B scenario are 7.63, 12.66, and 35.08%respectively. The rele- vant findings under the A2 scenario are 6.73, 10.16, 40.8%. As a consequence, water shortage would be more serious in the third period of study under all three scenarios. The percentage of drought occurrence in the future years under the A2, B1, and A1B will be 19.23%, 17.74%, and 18.84%, respectively which confirms the worst condition under the A2

scenario. For all stations, the number of months with moderate drought was substantially more than severe and extreme droughts. Considering the A2 scenario as a high emission scenario, the analysis of SPEI frequency illustrated that the proportion of dry periods in regions with humid and cool climate is more than hot and warm climates; however, the PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290698 November 9, 2023 1 / 24 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Bayatavrkeshi M, Imteaz MA, Kisi O, Farahani M, Ghabaei M, Al-Janabi AMS, et al. (2023) Drought trends projection under future climate change scenarios for Iran region. PLoS ONE 18(11): e0290698. https://doi.org/10.1371/ journal.pone.0290698 Editor: Shamsuddin Shahid, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, MALAYSIA Received: May 31, 2023 Accepted: August 15, 2023 Published: November 9, 2023 Copyright: © 2023 Bayatavrkeshi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper. Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.