Projected climate change impacts upon dew yield in the Mediterranean basin.
Water scarcity is increasingly raising the need for non-conventional water resources, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. In this context, atmospheric moisture can potentially be harvested in the form of dew, which is commonly disregarded from the water budget, although its impact may be significant when compared to rainfall during the dry season. In this study, a dew atlas for the Mediterranean region is presented illustrating dew yields using the yield data collected for the 2013 dry season. The results indicate that cumulative monthly dew yield in the region can exceed 2.8mm at the end of the dry season and 1.5mm during the driest months, compared to <1mm of rainfall during the same period in some areas. Dew yields were compared with potential evapotranspiration (PET) and actual evapotranspiration (ET) during summer months thus highlighting the role of dew to many native plants in the region. Furthermore, forecasted trends in temperature and relative humidity were used to estimate dew yields under future climatic scenarios. The results showed a 27% decline in dew yield during the critical summer months at the end of the century (2080).
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering & Architecture, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
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Tomaszkiewicz
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering & Architecture, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon. Electronic address: majdian@aub.edu.lb.
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Abou Najm
Physique et Mecanique des Milieux Heterogenes, UMR 7636 CNRS - ESPCI, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie - Universite Paris Diderot, 10 rue Vauquelin, 75005 Paris, France; Service des Basses Temperatures, CEA-Grenoble & Universite Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France; OPUR, 60 rue Emeriau, 75015 Paris, France.
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Beysens
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering & Architecture, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
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Alameddine
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, United States.
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Bou Zeid
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering & Architecture, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
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El-Fadel
Climate change adaptation; Dew; Geostatistical analysis; Non-conventional water resources