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Introduction. While the extent to which the 2007/08 drought in the Levant region destabilized the Syrian government continues to be debated, there is no questioning the enormous toll this extreme event took on the region’s population. The movement of refugees from both the drought and war affected regions into Jordan and Lebanon ensured that the anomalously low precipitation in the winter of 2013/14 amplified impacts on already complex water and food provisions.

It is hypothesized that droughts over the Levant region can be linked to three types of synoptic regimes (Saaroni et al. 2014). The regimes include 1) an expansion of the subtropical high over the majority of the Mediterranean Basin, 2) a pronounced stagnant ridge/block, and 3) an intrusion of lower-level continental polar air. The 2014 drought, affecting parts of Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel, was characterized by extremes in low rainfall, the …