Improving Drought Monitoring for the Middle East and North Africa Region via Data Assimilation Using the NASA Land Information System (LIS)

Abstract:

Food and water security have become an increasingly pressing concern for countries within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region under climate change. Droughts, among the most important issues facing this region in economic, environmental and social terms, have become more frequent and severe in recent decades. An effective drought monitoring and early warning system is thus critical to support drought impact assessments and risk management. In this presentation, we describe efforts to improve the simulation of hydrological conditions for semi-arid and arid environments using the Noah Multi-parameterization (Noah-MP) Land Surface Model within the NASA Land Information System (LIS) via assimilating remotely sensed leaf area index and soil moisture in the presence of irrigation. Multi-source satellite-based evapotranspiration products are used to evaluate the model performance under the impact of the choice of meteorological forcing datasets, the presence of irrigation, and data assimilation. The improved model configuration is aimed to deliver better soil moisture estimates for the composite drought indicator (CDI) for drought monitoring and to provide better initial conditions in support for hydrological drought forecasting.