The projected death of the Fertile Crescent

Abstract

Projections of rainfall and stream flowin the Mediterranean and the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East are presented here for the end of the twenty-first century. Up until recently, this has not been possible due to the lack of observed data and atmospheric models with sufficient resolution. An innovative super-high-resolution (20-km) global climate model is employed, which properly reproduces the moisture fields of the present-day climate over the study area. The model projected that the Fertile Crescent will lose its current shape and may disappear altogether by the end of this century. The annual discharge of the Euphrates River will decrease by 29–73 %, as will thestreamflow in the Jordan River. Thus countermeasures for water shortages will become much more difficult.