Drought -- National Drought Mitigation Center
Title
Persian Gulf Sea Surface Temperature as a Drought Diagnostic for Southern Iran
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
October 1998
The Persian Gulf and Oman Sea, situated over the
northwestern extremity of the tropical Indian Ocean,
make up the southern border of Iran (Figure 1).
During hot seasons, the sea surface temperatures
(SSTs) of these water bodies are high, and a huge
thermal trough system is usually dominant over the
region (Bitan and Sa’aroni, 1992). The summer SSTs
of the Persian Gulf are reported to be the highest in the
world (Gabler, 1977).
About 30% of the total rain-bearing air masses
coming to the country originate in north Africa, the
Red Sea, and western Saudi Arabia (Khalili, 1992).
These air masses are known as the Sudan Current;
they are categorized as tropical maritime. They produce a significant portion of the total annual rainfall
over the southern parts of Iran. Figure 2 shows that the
general trajectory of the Sudan Current passes over
Saudi Arabia and enters Iran through the Persian
Gulf. The occurrence of some heavy winter rainfalls
in Shiraz, Fasa, Bushehr, and Bandar Lengeh (Figure
1) is attributed to the movement of the Sudan Current
toward Iran (Khalili, 1992).
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Published in Drought Network News Vol. 10, No. 3, October 1998. Published by the International Drought Information Center and the National Drought Mitigation Center, School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska – Lincoln.