Hydrology and Droughts in the Nile: A Review of Key Findings and Implications

Abstract

The Nile Basin has long been the subject of extensive research, reflecting its importance, which spans from its historical role in the development of ancient civilizations to its current significance in supporting rapidly changing socioeconomic conditions of the basin countries. This review synthesizes studies focusing on the past and future climate, hydrologic, and drought outlooks of the basin, and explores the roles played by large-scale atmospheric phenomena and water infrastructure on the basin’s climate and hydrology. Overall, the studies underscore the complexity of the Nile hydrological system and the necessity for improved modeling and data integration. This review serves as a guide to areas warranting further research by highlighting the uncertainties and inconsistencies among the different studies. It underscores the interconnectedness of climatic and hydrological processes in the basin and encourages the use of diverse data sources to address the data scarcity issue and ensemble models to reduce modeling uncertainty in future research. By summarizing the data and modeling resources employed in these studies, this review also provides a valuable resource for future modeling efforts to understand and explore of the basin’s complex climatic and hydrological dynamics.

Keywords

• Nile River
• Blue Nile
• drought
• climate change
• El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO)
• Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)