Chapter 2: State of the Environment and Policy Response
2.6 Climate change Key messages: Climate change • The West Asia region has seen an increase in CO2 emissions over recent decades as a result of growing total energy
consumption. This is linked to population size and economic activity, but is also heavily influenced by the energy fuel mix and the efficiency of water and electricity use.
• Energy use per person is currently rising in West Asia, highlighting the need for increasing efforts to promote energy. •
Mitigation processes include the review of policies and policy instruments to build a low-carbon economy, such as through the promotion of the efficient use of water and energy, increasing the share of renewable sources in the energy mix, and the use of public transport and cleaner vehicles and fuels.
• There is a strong need to develop regional and national adaptation strategies which consider the cumulative impacts of multiple stressors, rather than considering the potential impacts from climate change alone.
2.6.1 Climate change in West Asia
In West Asia, atmospheric temperatures can vary greatly geographically and with seasons and time of day. In the Rub Al Khali desert, the climate is hyper-arid and temperatures can reach 51°C during the day in summer. Annual rainfall can be as low as 40 millimetres per year, evaporation rates vary from 2 to 3 metres per year and localised groundwater recharge is very low in some areas.
The sea area covered by the Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment (ROPME) has some of the world’s hottest waters, with monthly summer sea surface temperatures regularly exceeding 34°C (Riegl et al. 2011). The ROPME Sea Area has large coastal extensions less than 20 metres deep, resulting in high evaporation rates. This in turn results in high salinity levels of around 40 kilograms of salts per cubic metre of water near the coastline, compounded by low rates of freshwater inflow (MAF/ICBA 2012).
Climate change is already being felt in the region, with higher temperatures and lower precipitation levels. Over the Arabian Peninsula, from 1979 to 2009, observed annual mean rainfall declined by 47.8 millimetres each decade, while temperatures increased by 0.71°C (maximum), 0.6°C
Credit: Shutterstock/ Ahmad A Atwah
(mean), and 0.48°C (minimum) (Almazroui et al. 2012) (Figure 2.6.1 & Figure 2.6.2).
Sea surface temperatures in the ROPME Sea Area, except the Gulf of Oman waters, have risen on average by 0.2°C per decade over the past 50 years, but this rate accelerated to 0.45°C per decade in the past 20 years (Sheppard and Loughland 2002). In some areas the rate of heating is projected to occur much more rapidly as a result of the combined effects of global climate change and local stressors such as desalination – Kuwait Bay has already shown substantial sea surface temperature increases of 0.6°C per decade between 1985 and 2002 , three times the global average (Al-Rashidi et al. 2009). Such increases threaten thermally sensitive marine organisms. Projections show that sea temperatures in the Arabian Gulf are likely to increase by 2°C this century, with the consequence that mass coral mortality events are predicted to have a 50 per cent probability of occurrence annually within 50 years (Sheppard 2003).
Projections of future climate in the Arabian Peninsula for 2060– 2079 under RCP 8.53
3 RCP 8.5 is the Representative Concentration Pathway defined in the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report that corresponds to a high emission scenario and radiative forcing reaching 8.5 watts per square metre near 2100.
83 indicate that atmospheric temperatures would increase by 2–3°C over land areas but decrease over
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156