Speaker
Description
Across MENA and the Mediterranean drylands, irrigation has become the dominant response to agricultural water stress but it masks the climate signal and puts water resources under threat. Using three MSG-derived thermal drought indicators from dirurnal Land Surface Temperature (LST) data (ΔLST, RTI-β, SATDA) at 0.05° over 2005–2024, combined with GPP-weighted quantile regression and GRACE terrestrial water storage, we show that (i) agricultural drought has intensified region-wide, (ii) the dominant adaptation mode is productivity redistribution within a stable cropland footprint with a continuous gradient from rainfed cooling to irrigation-buffered warming (β: −0.05 to +0.23 K/yr across irrigation-fraction deciles), and (iii) where irrigation sustains productivity, GRACE reveals accelerating depletion of the groundwater storage.