Jordan: Water Scarcity: Difference between revisions

The amount of rain that falls in Jordan in the north is mainly influenced by orography (the topographic relief of mountains), with rainfall in Galilee and Jerusalem (which are about 800m above sea level) exceeding 600mm per year, while rainfall in the Jordan Valley (in the range of -400 to 0m) is less than 200mm per year<ref name="Black" /> (as a measure of how little water this is, a viable level of rain-fed agriculture is 400mm per year, i.e. it’s impossible to farm below that level).<ref name="Medina" /> By way of contrast, the south is exceedingly dry and rainfall is not influenced by mountain topography. Ma’an, for example, is 1,069m above sea level but receives less than 100mm of rain per year. <ref name="Black" /> This north-south contrast is the result of the differences in trajectories of depressions that bring most of the winter rainfall to the Middle East: in the north they bring moist Mediterranean air and therefore cause it to rain, while in the south the same depressions bring dry desert air from the Sinai and hence almost no rain. <ref name="Black" />