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Hydroclimate of the Lake Urmia Catchment Area: A Brief Overview

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Lake Urmia

Part of the book series: The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry ((HEC,volume 123))

Abstract

Lake Urmia in Iran, the largest land-locked water body in Iran and the second largest hypersaline lake in the world has experienced a drastic 90% decline in its surface area due to decrease in water supply beginning in the mid-1990s. The effect of climate variability under current warming condition versus the human induced hydro-chemical imbalance as the primary cause(s) of such a drastic change remains a matter of considerable debate. Water supply to the lake is from a 52,000 km2 catchment area through 13 perennial and seasonal tributaries. Using 65-year long hydro-climatological time series from nine major meteorological stations across the region combined with land surface temperature (LST) data we examine the impact of climate variability on water inflow to the lake. Our study shows that the abrupt 21.4% shift in precipitation and 50.8% decline in water flow to the lake occurred in 1995 while a positive 1°C shift in atmospheric temperature and 1.37°C increase in land surface temperatures took place in 1997. Temperature and precipitation time series present low coherency with water inflow to the lake. This evidence along with the sub-decadal cyclicity in the annual mean temperature suggests the anthropogenic activities in the catchment area may have carried out an important role in the current progressive imbalance in water availability to the lake. Telecommunication between the hydroclimate condition across the Lake Urmia catchment area and the climate variability over the North Atlantic region was inferred from wavelet analysis of temperature and NAO index time series.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express their appreciations to Dr. Abdolmajid Naderi for providing access to the updated climate data from synoptic meteorological stations across the Lake Urmia catchment basin. The GHCN Gridded V2 data was provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSL, Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neptune Isotope Laboratory (NIL), Department of Marine Geosciences, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA

    Arash Sharifi

  2. Beta Analytic-Isobar Science, Research and Development Department, Miami, FL, USA

    Arash Sharifi

  3. Conservation Sudbury, Nickel District Conservation Authority (NDCA), Sudbury, ON, Canada

    Mojgan Esfahaninejad

  4. Department of Marine Remote Sensing, Iranian National Institute for Oceanography and Atmospheric Science (INIOAS), Tehran, Iran

    Keivan Kabiri

Authors
  1. Arash Sharifi
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  2. Mojgan Esfahaninejad
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  3. Keivan Kabiri
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arash Sharifi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Akvaplan-Niva AS, Oslo, Norway

    Peygham Ghaffari

  2. Norwegian Institute for Water Research, Oslo, Norway

    Evgeniy V. Yakushev

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Sharifi, A., Esfahaninejad, M., Kabiri, K. (2021). Hydroclimate of the Lake Urmia Catchment Area: A Brief Overview. In: Ghaffari, P., Yakushev, E.V. (eds) Lake Urmia. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, vol 123. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/698_2021_809

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