ALBERT

Description: 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.

Description: 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.

Description: 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.

Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Serra, M., Sathe, P., Rypina, I., Kirincich, A., Ross, S. D., Lermusiaux, P., Allen, A., Peacock, T., & Haller, G. Search and rescue at sea aided by hidden flow structures. Nature Communications, 11(1), (2020): 2525, doi:10.1038/s41467-020-16281-x.

Description: Every year, hundreds of people die at sea because of vessel and airplane accidents. A key challenge in reducing the number of these fatalities is to make Search and Rescue (SAR) algorithms more efficient. Here, we address this challenge by uncovering hidden TRansient Attracting Profiles (TRAPs) in ocean-surface velocity data. Computable from a single velocity-field snapshot, TRAPs act as short-term attractors for all floating objects. In three different ocean field experiments, we show that TRAPs computed from measured as well as modeled velocities attract deployed drifters and manikins emulating people fallen in the water. TRAPs, which remain hidden to prior flow diagnostics, thus provide critical information for hazard responses, such as SAR and oil spill containment, and hence have the potential to save lives and limit environmental disasters.

Description: We are grateful to Margaux Filippi, Michael Allshouse, Javier González-Rocha, Peter Nolan, Siavash Ameli, Patrick Haley Jr., and the MSEAS team for their contribution in the field experiments. We also acknowledge the NSF Hazard funding grant no. 1520825. S.D.R. acknowledges support from NSF grant no. 1821145. M.S. would like to acknowledge support from the Schmidt Science Fellowship (https://schmidtsciencefellows.org/). G.H. acknowledges support from the Turbulent Superstructures Program of the German National Science Foundation (DFG).

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Johnston, T. M. S., Schonau, M. C., Paluszkiewicz, T., MacKinnon, J. A., Arbic, B. K., Colin, P. L., Alford, M. H., Andres, M., Centurioni, L., Graber, H. C., Helfrich, K. R., Hormann, V., Lermusiaux, P. F. J., Musgrave, R. C., Powell, B. S., Qiu, B., Rudnick, D. L., Simmons, H. L., St Laurent, L., Terrill, E. J., Trossman, D. S., Voet, G., Wijesekera, H. W., & Zeiden, K. L. Flow Encountering Abrupt Topography (FLEAT): a multiscale observational and modeling program to understand how topography affects flows in the western North Pacific. Oceanography, 32(4), (2019): 10-21, doi: 10.5670/oceanog.2019.407.

Description: Using a combination of models and observations, the US Office of Naval Research Flow Encountering Abrupt Topography (FLEAT) initiative examines how island chains and submerged ridges affect open ocean current systems, from the hundreds of kilometer scale of large current features to the millimeter scale of turbulence. FLEAT focuses on the western Pacific, mainly on equatorial currents that encounter steep topography near the island nation of Palau. Wake eddies and lee waves as small as 1 km were observed to form as these currents flowed around or over the steep topography. The direction and vertical structure of the incident flow varied over tidal, inertial, seasonal, and interannual timescales, with implications for downstream flow. Models incorporated tides and had grids with resolutions of hundreds of meters to enable predictions of flow transformations as waters encountered and passed around Palau’s islands. In addition to making scientific advances, FLEAT had a positive impact on the local Palauan community by bringing new technology to explore local waters, expanding the country’s scientific infrastructure, maintaining collaborations with Palauan partners, and conducting outreach activities aimed at elementary and high school students, US embassy personnel, and Palauan government officials.

Description: We are grateful to Captains David Murline and Tom Desjardins and the crew of R/V Roger Revelle, and to the staff of the Coral Reef Research Foundation, for their help in carrying out the field program; to ONR for funding this work; and to FLEAT colleagues for their collaboration. We wish to thank the Bureau of Marine Resources, Ministry of Natural Resources, Environment and Tourism of the Palau National Government, and the Angaur, Kayangel, Koror, and Peleliu State Governments for the relevant permits to conduct this research in Palau’s waters.