Climate change and the projection of future temperature and precipitation in southern Iraq using a LARS-WG model

The Middle East region, where Iraq is located, is characterized by its arid and semi-arid climate and which is anticipated to be more sensitive to the potential effect of climate change and global warming. LARS-WG6.0, a weather generator model, was utilized in this research to project future changes in precipitation and temperature. Five global climate models (GCMs), CSIRO-Mk3.6.0, HadGEM2-ES, CanESM2, MIROC5 and NorESM1-M, were used to predict future change in climate based on two emission scenarios, RCP8.5 and RCP4.5, over three selected periods of time: 2021–2040, 2051–2070 and 2081–2100. Three local meteorological stations in southern Iraq representing the study area, were employed for calibration and validation of the model, by adopting the historical data of the period 1980–2010. The results of the generated predictions show that there will be an increase in annual minimum and maximum temperatures, by this century’s end, by 5.67–5.91 °C under RCP8.5 and 1.41–1.50 °C under RCP4.5 across all study stations. The results also show that there are different decreases trends predicted for precipitation across all five GCMs models. This indicates the high uncertainty around the prediction of future precipitation if using only one model. Temperature and precipitation changes will have a direct impact on the availability of water resources in southern Iraq, especially in the wetlands which will suffer from water scarcity, desertification and other environmental challenges.