The Department of Geology at the College of Science organized a panel discussion entitled (Assessment of drought in Iraq for the period 2002-2020 using ground water storage deficit derived from GRACE). The workshop, which was lectured by the researcher Ayat Ali Hassan, aims to use the Ground Storage Anomaly (TWSA) retrieved from GRACE with a spatial resolution of 1° ´ 1° for ten grid cells covering the Iraqi territory and for the period from 2002-2022 to estimate the Water Storage Deficit (WSD) and use it as a hydrological drought indicator to characterize Intensity and lengths of drought and its comparison with meteorological drought resulting from the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) at different time scales.
The study involved analyzing GRACE data from ten JPL grid cells, along with rainfall data from 11 weather stations to calculate the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) at different time scales using DrinC software. The study uses non-parametric Mann-Kendal tests and Sen's slope statistics to determine the direction and value of the direction of the groundwater storage anomaly retrieved from GRACE.
The results found that TWSA in Iraq experienced a slight decrease from 2007 to 2017, indicating a drier climate during that period, but an increase from 2002 to 2006 and 2018 to 2020, indicating a wetter climate during those periods. The water storage deficit varies across the different grid cells and each cell has unique characteristics and trends. The study also found that drought severity and duration appear to be more severe in the northern and southern regions of Iraq, while the central region suffers from more frequent but less severe droughts. Mann-Kendall test results showed a significant decreasing trend in the water storage deficit index and a significantly increasing trend in SPI-06 in most grid cells, while precipitation indicates a significant trend only in one grid cell. The Water Storage Deficit Index and SPI-06 have similar patterns.