Oceanography The Official Magazine of
The Oceanography Society
Volume 30 Issue 02

View Issue TOC
Volume 30, No. 2
Pages 53 - 55

OpenAccess

KAUST’s Red Sea Observing System

By Burton H. Jones  and Yasser Kattan 
Jump to
Citation References Copyright & Usage
First Paragraph

A combination of thermohaline circulation and monsoon-​modulated winds drive advection in the Red Sea. Biogeochemical processes are closely coupled with the physical dynamics of the sea, yet to date remain poorly resolved and understood. Given the Red Sea’s size (~2,000 km × 250 km), frequently occurring eddies can provide a mechanism for significant exchange between the open sea and its abundant coastal coral reef regions. Because no international waters exist within the Red Sea, and geopolitical restrictions allow only limited access, our most complete understanding of the Red Sea until recently has come from remote sensing and numerical modeling studies (e.g., Sofianos and Johns, 2002; Raitsos et al., 2013; Yao et al, 2014; Racault et al., 2015), although occasional ship expeditions have provided in situ observations with limited temporal and/or spatial coverage (e.g., Naqvi et al., 1986; Sofianos and Johns, 2007; Bower and Farrar, 2015; Kürten et al., 2016).

Citation

Jones, B.H., and Y. Kattan. 2017. KAUST’s Red Sea observing system. Oceanography 30(2):53–55, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2017.221.

References
    Bower, A.S., and J.T. Farrar. 2015. Air–sea interaction and horizontal circulation in the Red Sea. Pp. 329–342 in The Red Sea: The Formation, Morphology, Oceanography and Environment of a Young Ocean Basin. N.M.A. Rasul and I.C.F. Stewart, eds, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, https://doi.org​/10.1007/​978-3-662-45201-1_19.
  1. Churchill, J.H., A.S. Bower, D.C. McCorkle, and Y. Abualnaja. 2014. The transport of nutrient-rich Indian Ocean water through the Red Sea and into coastal reef systems. Journal of Marine Research 72(3):165–181.
  2. Kheireddine, M., M. Ouhssain, H. Claustre, J. Uitz, B. Gentili, and B.H. Jones. 2017. Assessing pigment-based phytoplankton community distributions in the Red Sea. Frontiers in Marine Science 4:132, https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2017.00132.
  3. Kürten, B., A.M. Al-Aidaroos, S. Kürten, M.M. El-Sherbiny, R.P. Devassy, U. Struck, N. Zarokanellos, B.H. Jones, T. Hansen, G. Bruss, and U. Sommer. 2016. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios of pelagic zooplankton elucidate ecohydrographic features in the oligotrophic Red Sea. Progress in Oceanography 140:69–90, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2015.11.003.
  4. Naqvi, S.W.A., H.P. Hansen, and T.W. Kureishy. 1986. Nutrient uptake and regeneration ratios in the Red Sea with reference to the nutrient budgets. Oceanologica Acta 9(3):271–275.
  5. Pearman, J.K., J. Ellis, X. Irigoien, Y.V.B. Sarma, B.H. Jones, and S. Carvalho. 2017. Microbial planktonic communities in the Red Sea: High levels of spatial and temporal variability shaped by nutrient availability and turbulence. Scientific Reports 7, 6611, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06928-z.
  6. Racault, M.-F., D.E. Raitsos, M.L. Berumen, R.J.W. Brewin, T. Platt, S. Sathyendranath, and I. Hoteit. 2015. Phytoplankton phenology indices in coral reef ecosystems: Application to ocean-color observations in the Red Sea. Remote Sensing of Environment 160:222–234, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2015.01.019.
  7. Raitsos, D.E., Y. Pradhan, R.J.W. Brewin, G. Stenchikov, and I. Hoteit. 2013. Remote sensing the phytoplankton seasonal succession of the Red Sea. PLOS One 8(6), e64909, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064909.
  8. Sofianos, S.S., and W.E. Johns. 2002. An Oceanic General Circulation Model (OGCM) investigation of the Red Sea circulation: Part 1. Exchange between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Journal of Geophysical Research 107(C11), 3196, https://doi.org/10.1029/2001jc001184.
  9. Sofianos, S.S., and W.E. Johns. 2003. An Oceanic General Circulation Model (OGCM) investigation of the Red Sea circulation: Part 2. Three-dimensional circulation in the Red Sea. Journal of Geophysical Research 108, 3066, https://doi.org/10.1029/2001JC001185.
  10. Sofianos, S.S., and W.E. Johns. 2007. Observations of the summer Red Sea circulation. Journal of Geophysical Research 112, C06025, https://doi.org/​10.1029/2006jc003886.
  11. Sofianos, S., and W.E. Johns. 2015. Water mass formation, overturning circulation, and the exchange of the Red Sea with the adjacent basins. Pp. 343–353 in The Red Sea: The Formation, Morphology, Oceanography and Environment of a Young Ocean Basin. N.M.A. Rasul and I.C.F. Stewart, eds, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45201-1_20.
  12. Yao, F.C., I. Hoteit, L.J. Pratt, A.S. Bower, P. Zhai, A. Kohl, and G. Gopalakrishnan. 2014. Seasonal overturning circulation in the Red Sea: Part 1. Model validation and summer circulation. Journal of Geophysical Research 119(4):2,238–2,262, https://doi.org/10.1002/2013jc009004.
  13. Zarokanellos, N.D., V.P. Papadopoulos, S.S. Sofianos, and B.H. Jones. 2017. Physical and biological characteristics of the winter-summer transition in the Central Red Sea. Journal of Geophysical Research, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JC012882.
Copyright & Usage

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.