Climate change in Kuwait Bay

National Oceanography Centre: Since 1985, seawater temperature in Kuwait Bay, northern Arabian Gulf, has increased on average 0.6°C per decade. This is about three times faster than the global average rate reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Differences are due to regional and local effects. Increased temperatures are having profound effects on key habitats and on power generation the Arabian Gulf.

Researcher Dr Thamer Al-Rashidi of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, said: “Because the waters of Kuwait Bay are well mixed by the tides, measurements of sea surface temperature can be used to assess temperature trends over time in the bay as a whole.” He and his colleagues used data on sea surface temperature (1985-2007) remotely sensed by a number of polar orbiting satellites to assess warming in Kuwait Bay and the Gulf region.

…They found that the sea surface temperature of Kuwait Bay increased over the period at an average rate of around 0.62°C per decade, with an uncertainty of plus or minus 0.01°C. This is about three times the rate of average global increase estimated by the IPCC.

The increase was greatest in the early summer and least during winter months. The length of summertime increased almost twice as fast as peak summertime temperature. In 1998 and 2003, the monthly measurements of sea surface temperature showed unusually high peaks in summer temperature coincident with El Niño events – periodic warming of the atmosphere and ocean affecting weather in many parts of the world.

Temperature dipped in 1991, in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. “Dense smoke from the burning of oil fields hung over the region blocking out the sun, and we believe that this atmospheric dimming caused the relatively low summertime temperature peak recorded that year,” said Dr Al-Rashidi, himself an officer in the Kuwaiti Navy. However, temperature then increased fairly steadily between 1992 and 2004. “What all of this tells us,” says Dr Al-Rashidi, “is that the global trends reported by the IPCC may not be representative locally.”…

NASA satellite images covered the Arabian Gulf (yearly average for 2006), this image show that the temperature increases generally towards the coastline. This is perhaps due to the heating effect of the local human activities which take place near the shoreline. The heating is about 2-3 ºC within 20 to 30 km from the shoreline.