Buffering the impacts of extreme climate variability in the highly engineered Tigris Euphrates river system

More extreme and prolonged floods and droughts, commonly attributed to global warming, are affecting the livelihood of major sectors of the world's population in many basins worldwide. While these events could introduce devastating socioeconomic impacts, highly engineered systems are better prepared for modulating these extreme climatic variabilities. Herein, we provide methodologies to assess the effectiveness of reservoirs in managing extreme floods and droughts and modulating their impacts in data-scarce river basins. Our analysis of multiple satellite missions and global land surface models over the Tigris-Euphrates Watershed (TEW; 30 dams; storage capacity: 250 km(3)), showed a prolonged (2007-2018) and intense drought (Average Annual Precipitation [AAP]: < 400 km(3)) with no parallels in the past 100 years (AAP during 1920-2020: 538 km(3)) followed by 1-in-100-year extensive precipitation event (726 km(3)) and an impressive recovery (113 +/- 11 km(3)) in 2019 amounting to 50% of losses endured during drought years. Dam reservoirs captured water equivalent to 40% of those losses in that year. Additional studies are required to investigate whether similar highly engineered watersheds with multi-year, high storage capacity can potentially modulate the impact of projected global warming-related increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall and drought events in the twenty-first century.

Automated summary

Global warming-induced extreme floods and droughts are affecting the livelihood of populations worldwide, but highly engineered systems like reservoirs are effective in managing these extreme climatic variabilities. A case study of the Tigris-Euphrates Watershed showed the potential of dam reservoirs in recovering from drought years.