Long-term study of precipitation and temperature fluctuation impacts on dust storms in Iraq and Syria using satellite images

Although the existence of vast desert areas in Syria and Iraq has always caused this large area to have an abundance of dust storms, in the past two decades, dust storm happened with greater intensity and frequency. In this study, the relationship between dust storms and determinant parameters precipitation and temperature was analyzed by statistics and interpretive methods from 2000 to 2015. Results showed that although there existed a relationship between monthly AOD and precipitation changes in some cases, this relationship was much more clearly seen on an annual scale. Monthly temperature changes demonstrated more similarity rather than yearly scale. Bivariate regression analysis between monthly temperature data and AOD showed a correlation with R^2 = 0/4 for Iraq and Syria’s deserts, which means that the amount of AOD increases with an increase in temperature. Also, there is an inverse relationship between precipitation and AOD data; however, this correlation was not significant in the bivariate regression. Multivariate regression result revealed that the rainfall in Iraq and Syria’s deserts does not have much impact on the model, and that temperature plays the main role in this model.

کلیدواژه ها:

Iraq and Syria Dust Storm ، MODIS satellite image ، TRMM ، Precipitation ، Temperature