Physics Seminar | Physics of the Gulf’s Circulation and Impacts of the Arabian Gulf Water on the Global Thermohaline Circulation

Abstract

This talk will address matters related to physics conservation laws in the ocean, in a way that can be understandable by undergraduate students of different areas and, as a matter of fact, by anyone who is capable to balance his/her bank accounts. It will start with focus on the Gulf and then extend to the Arabian Sea and beyond.

Due to the excess evaporation, much greater than precipitation and riverine inflow, the Arabian Gulf is a hypersaline environment. The net evaporation drives salt export or, equivalently, fresh water import, in a reverse estuarine circulation. Relatively fresher waters from the Indian Ocean enter through the Strait of Hormuz near the surface, to compensate the outflow of higher salinity waters in the deeper layers. The exchange of freshwater with the Gulf of Oman, to counterbalance the loss due evaporation, is done by the internal baroclinic flow through three components: a vertical overturning, the horizontal circulation and small-scale mixing. The understanding of this mechanism is highly relevant since any imbalance could lead to salinity trend in the Gulf. It also matters for the larger scales. The Arabian Gulf Water (AGW) and the Red Sea Water (RSW) form a plume of high salinity that spreads at the thermocline levels over a large area of the Indian Ocean, reaching the Gulf of Bengal and even the Agulhas Retroflection region, near southernmost tip of Africa. Despite the relatively small volume outflow–annual average less than 0.4 Sverdrups or 0.4 million cubic meters per second–because of its coherence and high salinity, the plume formed by the AGW and RSW affects significantly the hydrographic properties in a vast area of the Indian Ocean.

This topic is being investigated at the Gulf Environments Research Institute (GERI) of the American University of Sharjah. In the ongoing research, observational data and output of numerical models are analyzed to understand the Gulf’s circulation, the freshwater exchange through the Strait of Hormuz and the impacts of the AGW in the Indian Ocean. In this seminar, some preliminary results will be discussed.

Speaker: Professor Edmo J. D. Campos, Research Scientist at Gulf Environments Research Institute, AUS

Dr. Campos has BS (1978) and MS (1981) in Physics from the University of Brasilia, and PhD (1990) in Meteorology and Physical Oceanography from the University of Miami. He is an expert in Ocean Circulation, Ocean-Atmosphere Interactions and the Role of Ocean in the Climate System. Dr. Campos taught courses from undergraduate to graduate levels and conducts research based on observations and numerical models. In July 1990 joined the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), where he stayed until retirement in 2016, as Professor of Oceanography. From 1999 to 2016 he contributed as Adjunct Professor at the Rosenstiel School (RSMAS) of the University of Miami. From 2016 to 2018 he worked as Associate Researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Marine Studies (CIMAS), a collaborative program between RSMAS and the NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML). He is an Elected Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and of the Academy of Sciences of the State of Sao Paulo (Brazil). Was one of the Lead-Authors of Chapter 3 of the IPCC’s 5 th Assessment Report and is current or former member of several international panels such as the IOC/GOOS Ocean Observing Panel for Climate; The JCOMMOPS GO-Ship Program; The OceanSites; PIRATA and SAMOC. Throughout his career he supervised over 40 students and post-doctoral fellows.

For more information, contact [email protected].