Red Sea Hydrography and Oceanography

The fieldwork for this will be carried out during the next three years through the contract with WHOI. We anticipate increasing the involvement of KAUST faculty, research staff and students as they join KAUST. As I write this, KAUST and WHOI are mounting the first cruise to provide a broad scale physical and chemical oceanographic survey of the Saudi region in the Red Sea. We will work closely with colleagues at WHOI to analyze these observations and use them to develop a more detailed understanding of the phenomena and their dynamics. Numerical models show a great deal of fine scale variability throughout the region, but the current observational picture is not adequate to verify this variability. The KAUST/WHOI plan includes three additional cruises and KAUST will be a greater leadership role in the subsequent cruises. Prof Hoteit has transitioned several of the state-of-the-art numerical models to Shaheen and has been developing simulations of both the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf using global wind and sea-surface temperature products.