Towards an end-to-end analysis and prediction system for weather, climate, and marine applications in the Red Sea

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 102(1), (2021): E99-E122, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0005.1.The Red Sea, home to the second-longest coral reef system in the world, is a vital resource for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Red Sea provides 90% of the Kingdom’s potable water by desalinization, supporting tourism, shipping, aquaculture, and fishing industries, which together contribute about 10%–20% of the country’s GDP. All these activities, and those elsewhere in the Red Sea region, critically depend on oceanic and atmospheric conditions. At a time of mega-development projects along the Red Sea coast, and global warming, authorities are working on optimizing the harnessing of environmental resources, including renewable energy and rainwater harvesting. All these require high-resolution weather and climate information. Toward this end, we have undertaken a multipronged research and development activity in which we are developing an integrated data-driven regional coupled modeling system. The telescopically nested components include 5-km- to 600-m-resolution atmospheric models to address weather and climate challenges, 4-km- to 50-m-resolution ocean models with regional and coastal configurations to simulate and predict the general and mesoscale circulation, 4-km- to 100-m-resolution ecosystem models to simulate the biogeochemistry, and 1-km- to 50-m-resolution wave models. In addition, a complementary probabilistic transport modeling system predicts dispersion of contaminant plumes, oil spill, and marine ecosystem connectivity. Advanced ensemble data assimilation capabilities have also been implemented for accurate forecasting. Resulting achievements include significant advancement in our understanding of the regional circulation and its connection to the global climate, development, and validation of long-term Red Sea regional atmospheric–oceanic–wave reanalyses and forecasting capacities. These products are being extensively used by academia, government, and industry in various weather and marine studies and operations, environmental policies, renewable energy applications, impact assessment, flood forecasting, and more.The development of the Red Sea modeling system is being supported by the Virtual Red Sea Initiative and the Competitive Research Grants (CRG) program from the Office of Sponsored Research at KAUST, Saudi Aramco Company through the Saudi ARAMCO Marine Environmental Center at KAUST, and by funds from KAEC, NEOM, and RSP through Beacon Development Company at KAUST

Multi-Mission Satellite Detection and Tracking of October 2019 Sabiti Oil Spill in the Red Sea

A multi-mission satellite remote sensing (MSRS) approach is explored to detect and track leaked oil from the Sabiti oil tanker accident that occurred in the central Red Sea on 11 October 2019 (RSOS-2019). The spilled oil spread rapidly and reached the coastal land near Jeddah, the second largest city of KSA, on 17 October. Different oil spill detection algorithms were implemented on SAR and optical sensor-based satellite images to track the oil spill. Sentinel-1 SAR images were most efficient at detecting the spread and thickness of RSOS-2019, but their spatio-temporal coverage greatly limits their use for tracking the oil movement. The spread and propagation of oil were well captured by Sentinel-2 images up to three weeks after the accident day, in agreement with the SAR images. MODIS successfully detected the narrow patch of oil that was leaked on the incident day and the widespread oil patches two days after. Landsat-8 RGB composite and thermal infrared images captured the oil spill on 13 October. By filtering clouds from the Meteosat images through sequential analysis, the spread and movement of the oil patches were efficiently tracked on 13 October. PlanetScope images available between 12 and 17 October enabled tracking of the oil near the coastal waters. The inferred oil spill movements are consistent with the ocean currents as revealed by a high-resolution regional ocean reanalysis. Our results demonstrate the potential of the MSRS approach to detect and track oil spills in the open and coastal waters of the Red Sea in near real-time

Towards an End-to-End Analysis and Prediction System for Weather, Climate, and Marine Applications in the Red Sea

International audienceThe Red Sea, home to the second-longest coral reef systemin the world, is a vital resource for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Red Sea provides 90% of the Kingdom’s potable water by desalinization, supporting tourism, shipping, aquaculture and fishing industries, which together contribute about 10-20% of the country’s GDP.All these activities, and those elsewhere in the Red Sea region, critically depend on oceanic and atmospheric conditions. At a time of mega-development projects along the Red Seacoast, and global warming, authorities are working on optimizing the harnessing of environmental resources, including renewable energy, rainwater harvesting, etc. All these require high-resolution weather and climate information. Toward this end, we have undertaken a multi-pronged R&D activity in which we are developingan integrated data-driven regional coupled modeling system. The telescopically-nested components include 5km-600m resolution atmospheric models to address weather and climate challenges, 4km-50m resolution ocean models with regional and coastal configurations to simulate and predict the general and mesoscale circulation; 4km-100m ecosystem models to simulate the biogeochemistry; and 1km-50m resolution wave models. In addition, a complementary probabilistic transport modeling system predicts dispersion of contaminant plumes, oil-spill, and marine ecosystem connectivity. Advanced ensemble data assimilation capabilities have also been implemented for accurate forecasting.Resulting achievements include significant advancement in our understanding of the regional circulation and its connection to the global climate, development and validation of long-term Red Sea regional atmospheric-oceanic-wave reanalyses, and forecasting capacities.These products are being extensively used by academia/government/industry in various weather and marine studies and operations, environmental policies, renewable energy applications, impact assessment, flood-forecasting, etc

Towards an end-to-end analysis and prediction system for weather, climate, and marine applications in the Red Sea

The Red Sea, home to the second-longest coral reef system in the world, is a vital resource for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Red Sea provides 90% of the Kingdom’s potable water by desalinization, supporting tourism, shipping, aquaculture, and fishing industries, which together contribute about 10%–20% of the country’s GDP. All these activities, and those elsewhere in the Red Sea region, critically depend on oceanic and atmospheric conditions. At a time of mega-development projects along the Red Sea coast, and global warming, authorities are working on optimizing the harnessing of environmental resources, including renewable energy and rainwater harvesting. All these require high-resolution weather and climate information. Toward this end, we have undertaken a multipronged research and development activity in which we are developing an integrated data-driven regional coupled modeling system. The telescopically nested components include 5-km- to 600-m-resolution atmospheric models to address weather and climate challenges, 4-km- to 50-m-resolution ocean models with regional and coastal configurations to simulate and predict the general and mesoscale circulation, 4-km- to 100-m-resolution ecosystem models to simulate the biogeochemistry, and 1-km- to 50-m-resolution wave models. In addition, a complementary probabilistic transport modeling system predicts dispersion of contaminant plumes, oil spill, and marine ecosystem connectivity. Advanced ensemble data assimilation capabilities have also been implemented for accurate forecasting. Resulting achievements include significant advancement in our understanding of the regional circulation and its connection to the global climate, development, and validation of long-term Red Sea regional atmospheric–oceanic–wave reanalyses and forecasting capacities. These products are being extensively used by academia, government, and industry in various weather and marine studies and operations, environmental policies, renewable energy applications, impact assessment, flood forecasting, and more