scholarly journals Climatology of the Heat Low and the Intertropical Discontinuity in the Arabian Peninsula

Author(s):  
Ricardo Fonseca ◽  
Diana Francis ◽  
Narendra Nelli ◽  
Mohan Thota
Keyword(s):  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Fonseca ◽  
Diana Francis ◽  
Narendra Nelli ◽  
Mohan Thota

<p>The climatological state and the seasonal variability of the Arabian Heat Low (AHL) and the Intertropical Discontinuity (ITD) are investigated over the Arabian Peninsula using the 1979-2019 ERA-5 reanalysis data. The AHL is a summertime feature, mostly at 15º-35ºN and 40º-60ºE, exhibiting a clear strengthening over the last four decades in line with the observed increase in surface temperature. However, no clear shift in its position is detected. The AHL has a center over the Arabian Gulf and eastern Arabian Peninsula, co-located with the highest surface temperatures, and another over central Saudi Arabia, driven by low-level wind convergence and subsequent increase in atmospheric thickness. The ITD is the boundary between the hot and dry desert air and the cooler and more moist air from the Arabian Sea. It lies along the Arabian Peninsula’s southern coastline in the cold season but reaches up to 28º N between 50º - 60º E in the summer months. While the former has a rather small diurnal variability, the latter shows daily fluctuations of up to 10º. The ITD exhibited a weak northward migration in the 41-year ERA-5 period, likely driven by the increased sea surface temperatures in the Arabian Sea. On interannual timescales, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the Indian Ocean Dipole, and solar-geomagnetic effects play an important role in the AHL’s and ITD’s variability.</p>


1970 ◽  
pp. 56-63
Author(s):  
Tim Walters ◽  
Susan Swan ◽  
Ron Wolfe ◽  
John Whiteoak ◽  
Jack Barwind

The United Arab Emirates is a smallish Arabic/Islamic country about the size of Maine located at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Though currently oil dependent, the country is moving rapidly from a petrocarbon to a people-based economy. As that economy modernizes and diversifies, the country’s underlying social ecology is being buffeted. The most significant of the winds of change that are blowing include a compulsory, free K-12 education system; an economy shifting from extractive to knowledge-based resources; and movement from the almost mythic Bedouin-inspired lifestyle to that of a sedentary highly urbanized society. Led by resource-rich Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the federal government has invested heavily in tourism, aviation, re-export commerce, free trade zones, and telecommunications. The Emirate of Dubai, in particular, also has invested billions of dirhams in high technology. The great dream is that educated and trained Emiratis will replace the thousands of foreign professionals now running the newly emerging technology and knowledge-driven economy.


2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-112
Author(s):  
I. Friis

In spite of widespread consumption of coffee in Europe at the time of the Royal Danish expedition to Arabia 1761–1767, little was known of the cultivation of coffee in Yemen and of the Arabian coffee export to Europe. Fresh leaves of qat were used as a stimulant on the Arabian Peninsula and in East Africa, but before the Royal Danish expedition to Arabia this plant was known in Europe only from secondary reports. Two members of the expedition, Carsten Niebuhr and Peter Forsskål, pioneered studies of coffee and qat in Yemen and of the Arabian coffee export. Linnaeus' instructions for travellers requested observations on the use of coffee, but otherwise Forsskål and Niebuhr's studies of coffee and qat were made entirely on their own initiative. Now, 250 years after The Royal Danish expedition to Arabia, coffee has become one of the world's most valuable trade commodities and qat has become a widely used and banned drug.


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