The Arabian/Persian Gulf (the Gulf) is a shallow semi-enclosed sea that has experienced rapid anthropogenic changes over the last 30 years. These were mostly driven by the oil and gas boom, which resulted in widespread coastal developments, marine habitat loss and oil pollution. These changes have increased the vulnerability of marine ecosystems but also of coastal infrastructures, such as desalination plants, which are at risk of being disrupted by algal blooms and oil spills.
The ocean circulation in the Gulf takes place over a broad range of scales, from the basin scale circulation patterns driven by wind and density gradients to much smaller scales when the flow interacts with the coastal topography. SLIM can seamlessly bridge the gap between the circulation in the entire Gulf and its interactions with artificial structures down to a scale of a few tens of meters. The model has been thoroughly validated with in-situ ADCP data collected off Qatar. By explicitly representing the effect of artificial structures on the coastal circulation, our model has the potential to greatly improve the environmental impact assessment of coastal developments in the Gulf area.
External collaborators
Dr Essam Heggy (Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute), Dr Aboobacker V. Mohammed (Qatar University) and Prof. Ponnumony Vethamony (Qatar University).
To learn more…
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