Determining Moisture Sources of March 2019 Deadly Floods in Iran

Iran is semi- arid and arid country locates in Middle East. Although Iran often faces water shortage crisis and drought, the intense floods such as deadly March 2019 ones also occur in this country which cause intense financial and social disasters. Therefore, flood events mainly their sources should be carefully studied in Iran. In the following study, authors tried to show the moisture sources of Shiraz, Pole- Dokhtar and Agh-Ghala floods of March 2019 using Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model. The HYSPLIT backward model shows that the Mediterranean, the Red and the Arabian Seas were the main moisture sources for the deadly 19, 25 and 27 March 2019 Shiraz floods, while the Mediterranean and the Black Seas were the main moisture sources for 26 and 27 March 2019 floods in Pole-Dokhtar station in western part of Iran in Zagros mountain range. However, the main moisture source for the 18 to 21 March 2019 floods of Agh-Ghala in northern Iran was the Caspian Sea. Furthermore, the moisture amount causing these flood events have been calculated using MODIS mid-infrared and Near-infrared channels. The results show that the amount of moisture causing the deadly floods in March 2019 was very high. In addition, the amount of moisture causing floods in Pole-Dokhtar is higher than the ones causing the floods in Shiraz and Agh-Ghala regions. This study demonstrates that the moisture sources and amount of moisture causing the deadly floods of March 2019 in Iran were different.

Keywords:

flood , HYSPLIT , Iran , MODIS , moisture sources