The water crisis is one of the important issues in the Middle East countries. Many lakes are drying up and/or facing critical situations, exerting tremendous impacts on the socio-economics of their region. Lake Urmia, in northwestern Iran, currently is facing critical situations and is on the brink of total shrinkage and environmental disaster. This paper investigates the roots of crises through trend analysis of hydrologic variables and shows the impact of the lake desiccation on altering the local climate. The results indicate an increase in temperature, a decrease in lake inflow, and limited significant trends in precipitation. They also indicate that increasing agricultural water consumption is the main cause of the current crisis of Lake Urmia. Further investigation reveals a significant change in the local climate as a consequence of Urmia Lake water shrinkage. This change occurs in the dominant wind direction where before its desiccation the lake was acting as a cooling medium. This phenomenon vanished after the desiccation of the lake causing a sharp increase in the temperature of the affected areas.
Miller, H. L. (Eds.): IPCC (2007). Climate Change, The Physical Science Basis, Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2007.
Kendall, M. G. (1975). Rank Correlation methods. Griffin, London.
Mann, H. B. (1945). Non-parametric tests against trend. Econometrica. 13:245–259
Lins, H. F., & Slack, J. R. (1999). Stream flow trends in the United States. Geophysical research letters. 26:227- 230. Paper Number: 1998GL900291
Brunetti, M., Colacino, M., Maugeri, M., & Nanni, T. (2001). Trends in the daily intensity of precipitation in Italy from 1951 to 1996. International Journal of Climatology. 21: 299–316. doi: 10.1002: joc.613
Kampata, J. M., Parida, B. P., & Moalafhi, D. B. (2008). Trend analysis of rainfall in the headstreams of the Zambezi River Basin in Zambia. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. 33: 621–625. doi: 10.1016/j.pce.2008.06.012
Burn, D.H., & Elnur, M. A. H. (2002). Detection of hydrologic trends and variability. Journal of Hydrology. 255: 107- 122. Pii: S0022-1694(01)00514-5
Birsan, M.V., Molnar, P., Burlando, P., & Pfaundler, M. (2005). Streamflow trends in Switzerland. Journal of Hydrology. 314: 312–329. doi: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2005.06.008
Hirsch, R. M., Slack J. R., & Smith, R. A. (1982). Techniques of Trend Analysis for Monthly Water Quality Data. Water Resources Research. Vol. 18(1): 107-121
Lettenmaier, D. P., Wood, E. F., & Wallis, J. R. (1994). Hydro-Climatological trends in the continental United States. Journal of Climate. 7:586- 607
Kahya, E., & Kalayci, S. (2004). Trend analysis of streamflow in Turkey. Journal of Hydrology. 289: 128–144. doi: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2003.11.006
Hamed, K. H., & Rao, A. R. (1998). A modified Mann- Kendall trend test for auto correlated data. Journal of Hydrology. 204: 182- 196. Pii: S0022-1694(97)00125-X
Mondal, A., Kundu, S., Mukhopadhyay, A. (2012). Rainfall trend analysis by Mann-Kendall test: A case study of North-eastern part of Cuttack District, Orissa. International Journal of Geology, Earth and Environmental Sciences. 2(1): 70-78
Tabari, H., Marofi, S., Aeini, A., Hosseinzadeh Talaee, P., & Mohammadi, K. (2011). Trend analysis of reference evapotranspiration in the western half of Iran. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. 151: 128–136. doi: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2010.09.009
Kousari, M. R., Dastorani, M. T., Niazi, Y., Soheili, E., Hayatzadeh, M., & Chezgi, J. (2014). Trend detection of drought in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran based on implementation of Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) and application of non-parametrical statistical method. Water Resour Manage. Online. doi: 10.1007/s11269-014-0558-6
Wikipedia.org, List of drying lakes, 01/09/2014, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_drying_lakes
McBean, E., & Motiee, H. (2008). Assessment of impact of climate change on water resources: a long-term analysis of the Great Lakes of North America. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. 12: 239–255
Zhao, G., Horman, G., Fohrer, N., Zhang, Z., & Zhai, J. (2010). Streamflow Trends and Climate variability Impacts in Poyang Lake Basin, China. Water Resour Manage. 24:689–706
Henderson, S. E., & Lopez, M. A. (1989). Trend analysis of Lake Parker stage and relation to various hydrologic factors, 1950- 86, Lakeland, Florida. U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, Water-Resources Investigations Report 89-4037
Duguay, C. R., Prowse, T. D., Bonsal, B. R., Brown, R. D., Lacroix, M. P., & Menard, P. (2006). Recent trends in Canadian lake ice cover. Hydrol. Process. 20: 781–801. doi: 10.1002/hyp.6131
Yenilmez, F., Keskin, F., & Aksoy, A. (2011), Water quality trend analysis in Eymir Lake, Ankara. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. 36: 135–140. doi: 10.1016/j.pce.2010.05.005
Altunkaynak, A. (2007). Forecasting surface water level fluctuations of lake Van by artificial neural networks. Water Resour Manage. 21: 399–408. doi: 10.1007/s11269-006-9022-6
Guldal, V., & Tongal, H. (2010). Comparison of Recurrent Neural Network, Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System and Stochastic Models in Egirdir Lake Level Forecasting. Water Resour Manage. 24: 105–128. doi: 10.1007/s11269-009-9439-9
Imani, A., You, R. J.,& Kou, C. Y. (2014) Caspian Sea level prediction using satellite altimetry by artificial neural networks. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol, 11: 1035–1042
Vaziri, M. (1997). Predicting Caspian Sea surface water level by ANN and ARIMA models. Journal of waterway, port, coastal and ocean engineering. 158-162.
UNEP (2012) The dying of Iran’s lake Urmia and its environmental consequences. Tech. rep. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Global Environmental Alert Service (GEAS).
AghaKouchak, A., Norouzi, H., & Madani, et al. (2014). Aral Sea syndrome desiccates Lake Urmia: Call for action. Journal of Great Lakes Research. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jglr.2014.12.007
Glantz, M. H., & Rubinstein, (1993). Tragedy in the Aral Sea basin, looking back to plan ahead? Global Environmental Change. vol. 3: 174–198
Aladin, N. V., & Potts, W. T. W. (1992). Changes in the Aral Sea ecosystems during the period 1960-1990. Hydrobiologia. vol. 237: 67-79
Salameh, E., & El-Naser, H. (1999). Does the actual drop in Dead Sea level reflect the development of water sources within its drainage basin? Acta hydrochimica et hydrobiologica, vol. 27: 5-11
Radwan, A. Al-Weshah (2000). The water balance of the Dead Sea: an integrated approach. Hydrological Process. vol. 14: 145-154
Helsel, D. R., & Hirsch, R. M. (1992). Statistical Methods in Water Resources. Elsevier Publishers, Amsterdam, Holland.
Farokhnia. A., & Morid, S. (2012). Assessment of the Effects of Temperature and Precipitation Variations on the Trend of River Flows in Urmia Lake Watershed. Water and Wastewater. 3:86-97 (in Farsi)
Nouri, H. (2014, February). Urmia Lake precipitation trend analysis using Mann-Kendall test. 32nd National and 1st International Geosciences Congress, February 16-19, Tehran (in Farsi)
Eamen. L., & Dariane, A. B. (2014, June). Agricultural Development Role in Urmia Lake Crisis, Iran. UNESCO Chair in Technologies for Development: What is Essential? 4-6 June| EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. Retrieved from http://cooperation.epfl.ch/2014Tech4Dev/Sessions/6June
Dariane, A., Ghasemi, M., Karami, F., & Hatami, S. (2019). Urmia Lake desiccation and the signs of local climate changes. Journal of Hydraulic Structures, 5(2), 1-17. doi: 10.22055/jhs.2019.30414.1116
MLA
Alireza Dariane; Mahboobeh Ghasemi; Farzaneh Karami; Shadi Hatami. "Urmia Lake desiccation and the signs of local climate changes", Journal of Hydraulic Structures, 5, 2, 2019, 1-17. doi: 10.22055/jhs.2019.30414.1116
HARVARD
Dariane, A., Ghasemi, M., Karami, F., Hatami, S. (2019). 'Urmia Lake desiccation and the signs of local climate changes', Journal of Hydraulic Structures, 5(2), pp. 1-17. doi: 10.22055/jhs.2019.30414.1116
VANCOUVER
Dariane, A., Ghasemi, M., Karami, F., Hatami, S. Urmia Lake desiccation and the signs of local climate changes. Journal of Hydraulic Structures, 2019; 5(2): 1-17. doi: 10.22055/jhs.2019.30414.1116