A review of meteorological drought based indices towards integrated water resources management in Iraq

Abstract

Drought is considered as one of the natural dangerous and extreme phenomena. Since ancient times, the world had suffered from drought, which has a negative impact on human life that affect economic, social, cultural and tourism sectors. It means a severe shortage of water resources due to lack of rainfall and falling below the normal rate during a certain period of time, causing heavy losses on agricultural production, forcing some population to migrate and occurrence of disasters humanitarian disasters such as famine. Climate in Iraq is classified as a semi-arid and arid, many researchers had found that Iraq has suffered from drought, but this suffering will increase in the future due to deficiency of expected precipitation and increase temperatures. Therefore, the aimed to review meteorological drought in Iraq. This paper attempts to illustrate the key elements, indices, and categorization of drought and previous studies conducted in Iraq about drought. Conclusions of the review highlight gaps where it needs to focus more research of integrated water resources management to be implemented by decision makers in Iraq.