What is drought? The scientific understanding of drought: the primary step towards resolving Iran's water crisis

Abstract in Uncoded languages In this article we discuss four basic approaches to characterising droughts namely meteorological, hydrological, agricultural, and socioeconomic. In the first three approaches, drought is defined and measured as a physical phenomenon primarily related to the precipitation shortfall. Socioeconomic drought, nonetheless, is described and determined as the 'supply' and 'demand' in terms of water shortage in different socioeconomic systems. The specific case of Iran’s drought and water crisis is the main focus of this article, and is briefly compared to California’s ongoing drought. In cases such as Iran, the socioeconomic drought is a result of inefficient and unsustainable management of water resources. Therefore, we cannot simply associate droughts with climate variability and/or change. Furthermore, due to large uncertainties in climate modelling and water management scenarios, long-term prediction of drought is impossible