Drought Assessment using Micro-Wave Timeseries of Precipitation and Soil Moisture Over the Mena Region

The Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region has a prevailing hot and dry climate. The increasing demographic pressure brings an increased demand on water resources. In this study, we analyzed the drought dynamics using precipitation and soil moisture remote sensing data over the MENA region in the last two decades. Two types of remotely sensed micro-wave datasets (i.e. TRMM 3B43 and ESA-CCI SM) were used, to depict meteorological and agricultural droughts. Our results showed that the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) [1] from TRMM showed a good correlation with SPI from in-situ rainfall data and predicted successfully historical droughts. The standardized index shows lesser extreme agricultural droughts than meteorological drought for the same period. The region faced the biggest number of extreme meteorological droughts in 2015 and the biggest number of extreme agricultural droughts in 2013. These outputs help local and regional water management authorities as well as policy makers in combating water scarcity in the region. Further studies will look into optical remote sensing.