Abstract
In the ocean, heat waves are vital climatic extremes that can destroy the ecosystem together with ensuing socioeconomic consequences. Marine heat waves (MHW) recently attracted public interest, as well as scientific researchers, which motivates us to analyze the current heat wave events over the Red Sea and its surrounding sea region (Gulf of Aden). First, a comprehensive evaluation of how the extreme Red Sea surface temperature has been changing is presented using 0.25° daily gridded optimum interpolation sea surface temperature (OISST, V2.1) data from 1982 to 2020. Second, an analysis of the MHW’s general behavior using four different metrics over the study area, together with a study of the role of climate variability in MHW characteristics, is presented. Finally, the main spatiotemporal characteristics of MHWs were analyzed based on three different metrics to describe MHW’s local features. Over the studied 39 years, the current results showed that the threshold of warm extreme sea surface temperature events (90th percentile) is 30.03 °C, providing an additional average thermal restriction to MHW threshold values (this value is changed from one grid to another). The current analysis discovered 28 separate MHW events over the Red+, extending from 1988 to 2020, with the four longest events being chosen as a study case for future investigation. For the effect of climate variability, our results during the chosen study cases prove that ENSO and ISMI do not play a significant role in controlling MHW characteristics (except the MHW intensity, which has a clear relation with ENSO/ISMI) on Red+. Moreover, the chlorophyll concentration decreases more significantly than its climatic values during MHW events, showing the importance of the MHW effect on biological Red Sea features. In general, the MHW intensity and duration exhibit a meridional gradient, which increases from north to south over the Red Sea, unlike the MHW frequency, which decreases meridionally.
Highlights
According to Sparnocchia et al [2], Oliver et al [3] and Holbrook et al [4], Marine heat waves (MHW) are driven by a range of physical mechanisms, such as air–sea heat fluxes that coincide with atmospheric heat waves and/or horizontal temperature advection
Prominent occasions occurred over the Red Sea, especially: in its northern basin, as stated by Chaidez et al [5]; in the Gulf of Aqaba, as stated by Shaltout [6]; along the Mediterranean Sea including the central Ligurian Sea (Sparnocchia et al [2]), the central basin (Olita et al [7]) and the eastern basin (Ibrahim et al [8]); over the eastern Indian ocean, especially along the Western Australian coast (Pearce and Feng [9]) and across northern Australia (Benthuysen et al [10]); over the northeastern Pacific ocean (Bond et al [11]); over the northwestern Atlantic ocean (Chen et al [12])
Red+ sea surface temperature is calculated based on analyses of seasonal
Summary
Prominent occasions occurred over the Red Sea, especially: in its northern basin, as stated by Chaidez et al [5]; in the Gulf of Aqaba, as stated by Shaltout [6]; along the Mediterranean Sea including the central Ligurian Sea (Sparnocchia et al [2]), the central basin (Olita et al [7]) and the eastern basin (Ibrahim et al [8]); over the eastern Indian ocean, especially along the Western Australian coast (Pearce and Feng [9]) and across northern Australia (Benthuysen et al [10]); over the northeastern Pacific ocean (Bond et al [11]); over the northwestern Atlantic ocean (Chen et al [12]) These occasions resulted in significant environmental and financial impacts, including a reduced chlorophyll-a concentration (Bond et al [11]), continuous coral bleaching (Hughes et al [13]), the death of fish (Caputi et al [14]), mass mortality (Garrabou et al [15]), geographical and seasonal shifts of marine species (Mills et al [16]; Cavole et al [17]) and economic problems (Mills et al [16]).
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