Geological and Environmental Sciences, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA.
Geodynamics Department, National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics, Cairo, Egypt.
Sci Rep. 2022 Mar 9;12(1):4178. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-07891-0.
More extreme and prolonged floods and droughts, commonly attributed to global warming, are affecting the livelihood of major sectors of the world's population in many basins worldwide. While these events could introduce devastating socioeconomic impacts, highly engineered systems are better prepared for modulating these extreme climatic variabilities. Herein, we provide methodologies to assess the effectiveness of reservoirs in managing extreme floods and droughts and modulating their impacts in data-scarce river basins. Our analysis of multiple satellite missions and global land surface models over the Tigris-Euphrates Watershed (TEW; 30 dams; storage capacity: 250 km), showed a prolonged (2007-2018) and intense drought (Average Annual Precipitation [AAP]: < 400 km) with no parallels in the past 100 years (AAP during 1920-2020: 538 km) followed by 1-in-100-year extensive precipitation event (726 km) and an impressive recovery (113 ± 11 km) in 2019 amounting to 50% of losses endured during drought years. Dam reservoirs captured water equivalent to 40% of those losses in that year. Additional studies are required to investigate whether similar highly engineered watersheds with multi-year, high storage capacity can potentially modulate the impact of projected global warming-related increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall and drought events in the twenty-first century.
更极端和持久的洪水和干旱，通常归因于全球变暖，正在影响全球许多流域主要人口部门的生计。虽然这些事件可能会带来破坏性的社会经济影响，但高度设计的系统更能适应这些极端气候变异性的调节。在此，我们提供了评估水库在管理极端洪水和干旱以及调节其在数据匮乏的河流流域的影响方面的有效性的方法。我们对多个卫星任务和全球陆地表面模型在底格里斯-幼发拉底河流域（TEW；30 座大坝；蓄水量：250km）的分析表明，过去 100 年来，该流域经历了一次持续时间长（2007-2018 年）且强度大的干旱（年平均降水量[AAP]：<400km），与过去 100 年没有相似之处（1920-2020 年 AAP：538km），随后发生了一次 100 年一遇的大范围降水事件（726km），以及 2019 年令人印象深刻的恢复（113±11km），相当于干旱年份所遭受损失的 50%。大坝水库当年蓄水相当于这些损失的 40%。需要进一步研究是否具有多年高蓄水量的类似高度工程化的流域可以潜在地调节二十一世纪与全球变暖相关的极端降雨和干旱事件频率和强度增加的预期影响。
