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339758

Seasonal Heat and Buoyancy Fluxes in the Red Sea

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Last updated: 01 Jan 2025

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Abstract

The variations of thermal and haline buoyancy fluxes were investigated in the Red Sea. Analyses were performed to determine whether or not thermal buoyancy flux resulting from the net heat flux or haline buoyancy flux arising from freshwater flux dominates in the net buoyancy flux of the Red Sea. The effect of the two types of buoyancy flux was examined using  Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) water temperature and salinity data at a resolution of ≈3.2km during the years 2019 and 2020. The monthly mean atmospheric data were taken from the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) Re-analyses (ERA5-data). The evaporation rate in the Red Sea gradually decreased from north to south. The annual average evaporation rate for the Red Sea as a whole was 0.45cm/ day (1.64m/ year). The monthly average values of net heat flux for the Red Sea as a whole showed a heat loss from the Red Sea during winter months and heat gain during the rest of the year. The annual mean of net heat flux for the Red Sea as a whole showed a heat gain with an average value of about 61.6Wm-2. The net surface buoyancy flux destabilized the water column in January, February, November and December, which is an indication of the generation of strong convective mixing during these months. It stabilized the water column in the rest of the year, which means a stratification of the water column and shallow mixed layer depths. The buoyancy flux results also revealed that the thermal buoyancy flux dominated the haline buoyancy flux in all months over the Red Sea as a whole except for March 2019 in the Center Red Sea (CRS-region), October 2019 in the North Red Sea (NRS-region), January 2020 in the South Red Sea (SRS) and Entrance Red Sea (ERS-regions), and February 2020 in the CRS-region. During these exceptions, the region-averaged absolute ratio of the former to the latter was < 1 in the Red Sea. On the contrary, large buoyancy ratio values of ≫1 in other months explained that the buoyancy was much more sensitive to variations in heating.

DOI

10.21608/ejabf.2024.339758

Keywords

Red Sea, Evaporation, Heat flux, Buoyancy flux

Authors

First Name

Fahmy

Last Name

Eid et al.

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Orcid

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Volume

28

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

45296

Issue Date

2024-01-01

Receive Date

2024-02-04

Publish Date

2024-01-01

Page Start

1,041

Page End

1,062

Print ISSN

1110-6131

Online ISSN

2536-9814

Link

https://ejabf.journals.ekb.eg/article_339758.html

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https://ejabf.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=339758

Order

30

Type

Original Article

Type Code

103

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Egyptian Journal of Aquatic Biology and Fisheries

Publication Link

https://ejabf.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Seasonal Heat and Buoyancy Fluxes in the Red Sea

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Article

Created At

23 Dec 2024