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

Analysis of Large-Scale Environmental Features during Maximum Intensity of Tropical Cyclones Using Reanalysis Data

The present study investigates the variation in large-scale environments during the maximum intensity of tropical cyclones (TCs) formed in the Bay of Bengal. TC tracks are classified into four groups based on their direction of movement using the k-means clustering technique. Results from the pressure level and azimuthal-averaged radial-height wind fields near the vortex centre show weak deep layer wind shear (WS) and abundant moisture in all clusters. However, large-scale environmental differences in the northwest quadrant are identified with a contrasting combination of WS and humid environment between clusters. The composites of OLR are also analyzed during maximum intensities of TCs. Results show that anomalous high OLR in the west–northwest direction from the vortex centre, along with the low OLR around the vortex centre, signify the formation of a strong OLR dipole during TC peak intensity. Furthermore, OLR dipole metrics, such as magnitude, orientation, and distance, are observed by having mean of 235 Wm−2, 147, and 1782 km along with standard deviation of 14 Wm−2, 34°, and 492 km, respectively. The identified large-scale environmental fields from this study could provide valuable insights for predicting the intensity and movement of TCs

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