Impact of Brine Discharge from Seawater Desalination Plants on Persian/Arabian Gulf Salinity

Multiple Salinity Equilibria and Resilience of Persian/Arabian Gulf Basin Salinity to Brine Discharge

“…Gulf-Atmosphere regional model has been used successfully to estimate Gulf heat and water budgets (Xue and Eltahir, 2015) and to characterize the dynamic interplay between brine discharge and Gulf residual circulation (Ibrahim and Eltahir, 2019). MRCM and FVCOM have individually been used in many regional climate numerical studies.…”

“…Note that the desalination perturbation in D1b and D1c simulation (4.35 km 3 /year) is the same order of magnitude as current Gulf seawater desalination capacity, about 5 km 3 /year. There are more than 850 seawater desalination plants in the Gulf, and most of these plants, including the largest 24 (based on production capacity ≥100,000 m 3 /day) are located near the Arabian coast of the Gulf (Ibrahim and Eltahir, 2019). Hence, for practical reasons, and since small plants are assumed to have negligible impact, we use here only the production capacities of the 24 largest plants as the freshwater sink in D1b and D1c experiments.…”

“…The largest changes in regional salinities are in Gulf southwest region, especially in nearshore regions of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (Figures 9C,D). These regional salinity changes, which has been quantified and discussed in Ibrahim and Eltahir (2019), are very likely to have significant impact on local marine ecosystems. Accordingly, D1b experiment identifies Gulf subdomains that should be monitored for ecosystem stress due to brine discharge.…”

“…Because of scarce renewable freshwater resources, many surrounding countries rely on seawater desalination, about 50% of global capacity (Lattemann and Hopner, 2008;Jones et al, 2019). This anthropogenic activity removes about 5 km 3 /year of freshwater from the Gulf (Ibrahim and Eltahir, 2019), and the associated brine (about 12 km 3 /year) is disposed into the Gulf (Jones et al, 2019). Brine threatens Gulf marine ecosystems (Dupavillon and Gillanders, 2009;Roberts et al, 2010;Sale et al, 2011).…”

“…Meanwhile, basin buildup of the salt in brine threatens potable water supply there because energy required for desalination increases as salinity increases (Elimelech and Phillip, 2011;Voutchkov, 2018). While the impact of seawater desalination on the regional water quality has been studied (Ibrahim and Eltahir, 2019), there are rising concerns about the sustainability of seawater desalination and its impact on Gulf basin-scale salinity and marine ecosystem into the future (Sheppard et al, 2010;Elimelech and Phillip, 2011;Sale et al, 2011). In order to quantify current and future impacts of seawater desalination on Gulf salinity and avoid costly environmental problems, it is therefore vital to understand the stability of Gulf salinity state and its resilience to salinity perturbations resulting from seawater desalination.…”