Towards a 3D Northern Red Sea multi-scale ocean model to assess land-based waterborne pollutants impact on coral reefs

Abstract

In a warming world, annual coral bleaching is becoming more frequent, threatening reefs globally. While most shallow coral reefs could disappear in a +2.0°C climate, Northern Red Sea (NRS) corals may act as a thermal refuge until this century's end (Fine et al., 2013). However, these 'super-corals' are vulnerable to anthropogenic stressors, such as the NEOM mega-project. NEOM is $500B project composed of various projects (e.g. The Line, Oxagon and Sindalah) located on the Saudi Arabian shores. Such a mega-project will lead to extensive coastal development, hence increasing local stress on NRS coral reefs. Here, we developed a proof of concept of a 3D multi-scale ocean model coupled with a Lagrangian Particle Tracker (LPT) to simulate sediment dispersal from coastal development sites and assess NEOM's impact on NRS coral reefs. We show that a non-negligeable number of reefs could be exposed to turbidity-related impacts