The effect of climate change on drought severity and frequency in south Khorasan

Drought is one of the natural destructive phenomena which cause a lot of damage to the affected area. In this study, outputs of Fifth climate change report were used to investigate changes in precipitation and drought intensity at Birjand Synoptic Station during the next two periods. Precipitation data for two near future periods (2015-2045) and far future period (2045-2075) against base period (1975-2005) were downscaled using two scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP 8.5 using the LARS-WG model. Then the SPI values were determined for six time scales 1,3,6,12,24 and 48 months. The results showed that in most models, precipitation changes for both the near and far future periods would not be much higher than the base period. However, precipitation will drop further in the near future (2045-2075) than in the near future (2015-2045). Among the GCM models, the CanESM2 model shows the highest change over the base period and the RCP8.5 scenario estimates a lower rainfall than the RCP4.5 scenario. Also, in comparing the GCM models, NorESM1-M estimates the number of years with more severe drought. The results also showed that in future periods, as the SPI time period increases from short to long intervals, SPI values will show more severe drought conditions. Models uncertainty analysis also showed that the highest uncertainty value among models for long-term and short-term SPIs was related to NorESM1-M and Mpi-esm-mr models, respectively. The overall results also indicate an increase in severity and duration of drought in the future (especially the distant future).