Seasonal Heat and Buoyancy Fluxes in the Red Sea | ||||
| Egyptian Journal of Aquatic Biology and Fisheries | ||||
| Article 30, Volume 28, Issue 1, January and February 2024, Page 1041-1062 PDF (769.35 K) | ||||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/ejabf.2024.339758 | ||||
 View on SCiNiTO | ||||
| Author | ||||
| Fahmy Eid et al. | ||||
| 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. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| Red Sea; Evaporation; Heat flux; Buoyancy flux | ||||
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