Physical response of the Northern Arabian Gulf to winter Shamals

Li, Dapeng; Anis, Ayal; Senafi, Fahad Al

doi:10.1016/j.jmarsys.2019.103280

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These meteorological phenomena occur at a rate of 10 events per year and substantially impact the natural environment and human health. They also cause abrupt changes in the Gulf 's circulation, mixing intensities, heat-budget, and SST patterns (Al Senafi and Anis, 2015;Li et al, 2020b) similar to the Mistral winds that blow towards the Gulf of Lion in the Mediterranean (Bosse et al, 2021), and the Bora wind events that blow towards the Adriatic Sea (Ferrarin et al, 2019). In addition, SST changes resulting from these meteorological events also likely play a major role in the formation and location of the Gulf Deep Water (GDW).…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to the air-sea cooling at the Gulf 's center, as explained in Section 4.3, GDW is another regulator of the Gulf 's temperature. Although GDW is poorly understood, various studies (e.g., Thoppil and Hogan, 2010a,b;Li et al, 2020b) have suggested that it is convectively driven by cooling of the sea surface in the northern Gulf, and that it is more pronounced during late winter-spring, when vertical density stratification is weakest (Reynolds, 1993). GDW formation was found to occur within the vicinity of where the Gulf 's SST warming rate was fastest (Figure 3E); furthermore it occurred within those months when the warming rate was also fastest (Figure 8).…”

Section: Sst Temporal Variability and Sst Modes In Thementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Atmosphere-Ocean Coupled Variability in the Arabian/Persian Gulf

Senafi

2022

Front. Mar. Sci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Arabian Gulf comprises one of the world's most unique and fragile marine ecosystems; it is susceptible to the adverse effects of climate change due to its shallow depth and its location within an arid region that witnesses frequent severe atmospheric events. To reproduce these effects in numerical models, it is important to obtain a better understanding of the region's sea surface temperature (SST) variability patterns, as SST is a major driver of circulation in shallow environments. To this end, here, empirical orthogonal function (EOF) decomposition analysis was conducted to investigate interannual to multi-decadal SST variability in the Gulf from 1982 to 2020, using daily Level 4 Group for High Resolution SST (GHRSST) data. In this way, three dominant EOF modes were identified to contribute the Gulf's SST variability. Significant spatial and temporal correlations were found suggesting that throughout the 39-year study period, SST variability could be attributed to atmospheric changes driven by the El Nio-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO), and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) climate modes. Spatial and temporal analyses of the dataset revealed that the average SST was 26.7°C, and that the warming rate from 1982 to 2020 reached up to 0.59°C/decade. A detailed examination of SST changes associated with heat exchange at the air-sea interface was conducted using surface heat fluxes from fifth generation (ERA5) European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). Despite the SST warming trend, the accumulation of heat during the study period is suggesting that there was an overall loss of heat (cooling). This cooling reverted into heating in 2003 and has since been increasing.

show abstract

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sst Temporal Variability and Sst Modes In Thementioning

confidence: 99%

Atmosphere-Ocean Coupled Variability in the Arabian/Persian Gulf

Senafi

2022

Front. Mar. Sci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Additionally, the Gulf is known for its very sudden and extreme Shamal wind eventswinter northwesterly winds generally occurring in the winter months with winds at about 20 m/s sustained over a period of up to 3-5 days. A typical year will see about 10 Shamal events per year, with an increasing frequency of 1.63 Shamal days per year from 1973 to 2012 [18,19]. Shamal events bring dry desert air to the Gulf, which in addition to causing a tremendous upward evaporative heat loss from the Gulf and severe dust storms, may also raise the local sea level by several meters [19,20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combining Sea Level Rise Inundation Impacts, Tidal Flooding and Extreme Wind Events along the Abu Dhabi Coastline

Chow

Sun

2022

Hydrology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper describes the development of a two-dimensional, basin-scale tidal model with waves and wave run-up to determine the inundation impacts on the Abu Dhabi coastline due to the combined effect of sea level rise, tidal flooding, storm surge and waves. The model combines a hydrodynamics model (DELFT3D), a spectral wave model (SWAN) and wave run-up. A high horizontal resolution (down to about 30 m) is employed in the vicinity of Abu Dhabi—a city built on a system of mangrove islands along the Arabian Gulf coast—to enable prediction of impact at the scale of the local infrastructure, such as individual highway links. The model confirms that, with a rise in sea level of 0.5 m, the islands along the outer coast of Abu Dhabi will experience inundation due to tidal flooding, wind, and high Shamal-induced waves. The incorporation of the wind and waves results in a prediction of more than double the area found underwater within the study area (from 82 to 188 km2). The inner water channel regions of Abu Dhabi, while mostly unaffected by wind-driven wave events, are still vulnerable to tidal flooding. Finally, the paper demonstrates the use of the model to predict whether protection of one segment of the city’s coastline will adversely affect the inundation potential of nearby unprotected segments.

show abstract

“…Here tides are the main sources of currents with peak speeds of about 0.2 m/s, and a residual circulation of less than 0.01 m/s (Pous et al, 2012), with the sole exception of the channels between coastal islands. The physical water properties are determined almost exclusively by air-sea fluxes, rather than by upwelling and lateral mixing, as elsewhere in the Gulf (Al Senafi et al, 2019;Li et al, 2020). In particular, strong evaporation produces dense, salty water, which, further North, on the continental slope located around 26 • N, slowly pours into the deepest part of the Gulf and exits through the strait of Hormuz (Swift and Bower, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Summer Oxygen Dynamics on a Southern Arabian Gulf Coral Reef

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

During the summer the Arabian Gulf is the world's warmest sea, also characterized by hypersalinity and extreme annual temperature fluctuations (12–35oC), making it marginal for coral growth. Yet extensive reefs occur in all eight nations bordering the Gulf. Here we present data demonstrating recurrent summer hypoxia events [oxygen concentration (O2) <2 mg l−1] at a reef in the southern Gulf. Currently these episodes are short enough (median 3 h, max 10 h) to preclude mass mortality. Will this always be the case? Predicting future Gulf hypoxia risk for coral reef ecosystems requires diagnosing the underlying causes driving the timing and magnitude of O2 swings. To this end, we compare our data with the output of a simple coupled 1-D water column/biogeochemical model of the reef environment. This allows us to give quantitative estimates of the O2 fluxes produced by photosynthesis both in the water column and within the coral framework, by respiration processes in the benthos, and from the atmosphere. We demonstrate the role of turbulent mixing, and in particular of tides, in shaping the temporal variability of the amplitude of the diel O2 cycle. We find that, in spite of significant turbulent mixing, which maintains the temperature vertically well-mixed, the biological O2 production and consumption is dominant over the atmospheric O2 flux, and is sufficient to generate vertical differences of 1 to 5 mg l−1 between the bottom and 1.5 m above it. While estimating future trends of hypoxia frequency will require further study, the present findings single out the relevant physical and biological processes (and their interplay) which deserve further scrutiny. The Gulf today experiences temperatures expected to occur across much of the tropics by the end of the century, and the observation of recurrent hypoxia events in the Gulf suggests that similar hypoxic phenomena may represent an important, but to date underappreciated, threat to the future of global coral reefs.

show abstract

Physical response of the Northern Arabian Gulf to winter Shamals

Cited by 13 publications

References 40 publications

Atmosphere-Ocean Coupled Variability in the Arabian/Persian Gulf

Atmosphere-Ocean Coupled Variability in the Arabian/Persian Gulf

Combining Sea Level Rise Inundation Impacts, Tidal Flooding and Extreme Wind Events along the Abu Dhabi Coastline

Summer Oxygen Dynamics on a Southern Arabian Gulf Coral Reef

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About