Temperature patterns along an arid coastline experiencing extreme and rapid urbanization, case study: Dubai.

Today more than one billion people are living in coastal regions, and coastal urbanization is rapidly growing worldwide. Here, we explore the impact of an extreme and rapid coastal urbanization on temperature patterns, based on MODIS data. We study Dubai, one of the fastest growing cities in the world over the last two decades. Dubai's urbanization centers along its coastline - in land, massive skyscrapers and infrastructure have been built, while in sea, just nearby, unique artificial islands have been constructed. Studying the coastline during the years of intense urbanization, we show that the coastline exhibits surface urban heat island characteristics, where the urban center experiences higher temperatures, by as much as 2.5 °C and more, compared to the adjacent less urbanized zones. During development, the coastal surface urban heat island has nearly doubled its size, expanding towards the newly developed areas. This newly developed zone also exhibits the largest temperature trend along the coast of over 0.1 °C/year on average. In addition, an opposite linear relation was found between the surface temperature and albedo trends. In sea, temperature decreases were observed, particularly over the artificial islands, exceeding -0.1 °C/year, in one of them. The positive trends in land along with the negative trends in sea decreased the coastal sea-land temperature gradient by up to about -30% in only 12 years, which also decreased the land breeze intensity. The findings shown here directly affect the local coastal population and ecosystem, exacerbate the thermal comfort, and add additional burden to this area, which is already considered as one of the warmest in the world.

The relationship between cyclonic weather regimes and seasonal influenza over the Eastern Mediterranean.

The prediction of the occurrence of infectious diseases is of crucial importance for public health, as clearly seen in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we analyze the relationship between the occurrence of a winter low-pressure weather regime - Cyprus Lows - and the seasonal Influenza in the Eastern Mediterranean. We find that the weekly occurrence of Cyprus Lows is significantly correlated with clinical seasonal Influenza in Israel in recent years (R = 0.91; p < .05). This result remains robust when considering a complementary analysis based on Google Trends data for Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. The weekly occurrence of Cyprus Lows precedes the onset and maximum of Influenza occurrence by about one to two weeks (R = 0.88; p < .05 for the maximum occurrence), and closely follows their timing in eight out of ten years (2008-2017). Since weather regimes such as Cyprus Lows are more robustly predicted in weather and climate models than individual climate variables, we conclude that the weather regime approach can be used to develop tools for estimating the compatibility of the transmission environment for Influenza occurrence in a warming world. Furthermore, this approach may be applied to other regions and climate sensitive diseases. This study is a new cross-border inter-disciplinary regional collaboration for appropriate adaptation to climate change in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Regional lessons from the COVID-19 outbreak in the Middle East: From infectious diseases to climate change adaptation.

Global health threats including epidemics and climate change, know no political borders and require regional collaboration if they are to be dealt with effectively. This paper starts with a review of the COVID-19 outbreak in Israel, Palestine and Jordan, in the context of the regional health systems, demography and politics. We suggest that Israel and Palestine function as one epidemiological unit, due to extensive border crossing of inhabitants and tourists, resulting in cross-border infections and potential for outbreaks' transmission. Indeed, there is a correlation between the numbers of confirmed cases with a 2-3 weeks lag. In contrast, Jordan has the ability to seal its borders and better contain the spread of the virus. We then discuss comparative public health aspects in relation to the management of COVID-19 and long term adaptation to climate change. We suggest that lessons from the current crisis can inform regional adaptation to climate change. There is an urgent need for better health surveillance, data sharing across borders, and more resilient health systems that are prepared and equipped for emergencies. Another essential and currently missing prerequisite is close cooperation within and across countries amidst political conflict, in order to protect the public health of all inhabitants of the region.

Potential new aerosol source(s) in the Middle East.

The Middle East region suffers from high levels of air pollution originating from both Saharan/Arabian mineral dust particles and pollution from East Europe. A recent extreme autumn dust storm, originating from the Middle East, highlights the potential of a new aerosol source in the region. By studying the trends of daily regional synoptic systems through the 21st century, we show that dust-affiliated systems are projected to increase significantly, i.e. Red-Sea-Trough from 35.0 to 41.6% during autumn, for RCP8.5. Whereas, rain-affiliated ones are projected to decrease (for Cyprus Lows group from 18.7 to 12.5%). Here, it is suggested that those trends, along with increased anthropogenic activities, may result in the formation of a consistent new aerosol source in the area, which could influence life in the region. This is supported by a recent study showing an increase in dust deposition over the region.

A new dynamical systems perspective on atmospheric predictability: Eastern Mediterranean weather regimes as a case study.

The atmosphere is a chaotic system displaying recurrent large-scale configurations. Recent developments in dynamical systems theory allow us to describe these configurations in terms of the local dimension-a proxy for the active number of degrees of freedom-and persistence in phase space, which can be interpreted as persistence in time. These properties provide information on the intrinsic predictability of an atmospheric state. Here, this technique is applied to atmospheric configurations in the eastern Mediterranean, grouped into synoptic classifications (SCs). It is shown that local dimension and persistence, derived from reanalysis and CMIP5 models' daily sea-level pressure fields, can serve as an extremely informative qualitative method for evaluating the predictability of the different SCs. These metrics, combined with the SC transitional probability approach, may be a valuable complement to operational weather forecasts and effective tools for climate model evaluation. This new perspective can be extended to other geographical regions.

Differentiating between local and remote pollution over Taiwan.

In this study, an approach has been developed for differentiating between local and remote pollution over Taiwan, based on homogeneity perspective (variations of the standard deviation) of both AERONET measurements and NASA MERRA aerosol reanalysis (version 2, MERRA-2) over a 15-year period (2002 - 2017). The analysis of seasonal variations of the standard deviation of aerosol optical depth (AOD) measurements at six AERONET sites and MERRA AOD data in Taiwan showed that, in spring when remote aerosols dominate, the standard deviation is almost three times lower than that in autumn, when aerosols from local sources dominate. This finding was supported by MERRA AOD over the open ocean area: total AOD data were used to differentiate between local and remote pollution over both Taiwan and the open ocean area in the vicinity of Taiwan. Over Taiwan, MERRA total AOD showed a primary maximum in spring and a secondary one in autumn. Over the open ocean area, where there are no local sources of anthropogenic aerosols, MERRA total AOD showed only one maximum in spring and no maximum in autumn. This suggests that, in Taiwan, the maximum in autumn is attributed to local air pollution, while the pronounced maximum in spring is mainly caused by air pollution from continental Asia. The analyses of spatial distribution of 15-year monthly mean MERRA winds confirmed the above-mentioned results. Furthermore, similar to total AOD, MERRA sulfate AOD peaked in autumn over Taiwan, but not over the oceanic area: this indicates the contribution of local emissions of anthropogenic aerosols from the industrial sector. The standard deviation of MERRA sulfate AOD in spring is two-three times lower than the standard deviation in autumn: this is additional evidence that, in spring, sulfate aerosols from remote sources are predominant; while in autumn sulfate aerosols from local sources dominate.

AOD distributions and trends of major aerosol species over a selection of the world's most populated cities based on the 1st Version of NASA's MERRA Aerosol Reanalysis.

NASA recently extended the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Application (MERRA) with an atmospheric aerosol reanalysis which includes five particulate species: sulfate, organic matter, black carbon, mineral dust and sea salt. The MERRA Aerosol Reanalysis (MERRAero) is an innovative tool to study air quality issues around the world for its global and constant coverage and its distinction of aerosol speciation expressed in the form of aerosol optical depth (AOD). The purpose of this manuscript is to apply MERRAero to the study of urban air pollution at the global scale by analyzing the AOD over a period of 13 years (2003-2015) and over a selection of 200 of the world's most populated cities in order to assess the impacts of urbanization, industrialization, air quality regulations and regional transport which affect urban aerosol load. Environmental regulations and the recent global economic recession have helped to decrease the AOD and sulfate aerosols in most cities in North America, Europe and Japan. Rapid industrialization in China over the last two decades resulted in Chinese cities having the highest AOD values in the world. China has nevertheless recently implemented emission control measures which are showing early signs of success in many cities of Southern China where AOD has decreased substantially over the last 13 years. The AOD over South American cities, which is dominated by carbonaceous aerosols, has also decreased over the last decade due to an increase in commodity prices which slowed deforestation activities in the Amazon rainforest. At the opposite, recent urbanization and industrialization in India and Bangladesh resulted in a strong increase of AOD, sulfate and carbonaceous aerosols in most cities of these two countries. The AOD over most cities in Northern Africa and Western Asia changed little over the last decade. Emissions of natural aerosols, which cities in these two regions tend to be mostly composed of, don't tend to fluctuate significantly on an annual basis.

New perspectives on interdisciplinary earth science at the Dead Sea: The DESERVE project.

The Dead Sea region has faced substantial environmental challenges in recent decades, including water resource scarcity, ~1m annual decreases in the water level, sinkhole development, ascending-brine freshwater pollution, and seismic disturbance risks. Natural processes are significantly affected by human interference as well as by climate change and tectonic developments over the long term. To get a deep understanding of processes and their interactions, innovative scientific approaches that integrate disciplinary research and education are required. The research project DESERVE (Helmholtz Virtual Institute Dead Sea Research Venue) addresses these challenges in an interdisciplinary approach that includes geophysics, hydrology, and meteorology. The project is implemented by a consortium of scientific institutions in neighboring countries of the Dead Sea (Israel, Jordan, Palestine Territories) and participating German Helmholtz Centres (KIT, GFZ, UFZ). A new monitoring network of meteorological, hydrological, and seismic/geodynamic stations has been established, and extensive field research and numerical simulations have been undertaken. For the first time, innovative measurement and modeling techniques have been applied to the extreme conditions of the Dead Sea and its surroundings. The preliminary results show the potential of these methods. First time ever performed eddy covariance measurements give insight into the governing factors of Dead Sea evaporation. High-resolution bathymetric investigations reveal a strong correlation between submarine springs and neo-tectonic patterns. Based on detailed studies of stratigraphy and borehole information, the extension of the subsurface drainage basin of the Dead Sea is now reliably estimated. Originality has been achieved in monitoring flash floods in an arid basin at its outlet and simultaneously in tributaries, supplemented by spatio-temporal rainfall data. Low-altitude, high resolution photogrammetry, allied to satellite image analysis and to geophysical surveys (e.g. shear-wave reflections) has enabled a more detailed characterization of sinkhole morphology and temporal development and the possible subsurface controls thereon. All the above listed efforts and scientific results take place with the interdisciplinary education of young scientists. They are invited to attend joint thematic workshops and winter schools as well as to participate in field experiments.

Exploring the applicability of future air quality predictions based on synoptic system forecasts.

For a given emissions inventory, the general levels of air pollutants and the spatial distribution of their concentrations are determined by the physiochemical state of the atmosphere. Apart from the trivial seasonal and daily cycles, most of the variability is associated with the atmospheric synoptic scale. A simple methodology for assessing future levels of air pollutants' concentrations based on synoptic forecasts is presented. At short time scales the methodology is comparable and slightly better than persistence and seasonal forecasts at categorical classification of pollution levels. It's utility is shown for air quality studies at the long time scale of a changing climate scenario, where seasonality and persistence cannot be used. It is demonstrated that the air quality variability due to changes in the pollution emissions can be expected to be much larger than that associated with the effects of climatic changes.

Water cycle changes over the Mediterranean: a comparison study of a super-high-resolution global model with CMIP3.

Water cycle components over the Mediterranean for both a current run (1979-2007) and a future run (2075-2099) are studied with the Japan Meteorological Agency's 20 km grid global climate model. Results are compared with another study using the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 ensemble model (hereafter, the Mariotti model). Our results are surprisingly close to Mariotti's. The projected mean annual change rates of precipitation (P) between the future and the current run for sea and land are -11 per cent and -10 per cent, respectively, which are not as high as Mariotti's. Projected changes for evaporation (E) are +9.3 per cent and -3.6 per cent, compared with +7.2 per cent and -8.1 per cent in Mariotti's study, respectively. However, no significant difference in the change in P-E over the sea body was found between these two studies. The increased E over the eastern Mediterranean was found to be higher than that in the western Mediterranean, but the P decrease was lower. The net moisture budget, P-E, shows that the eastern Mediterranean will become even drier than the western Mediterranean. The river model suggests decreasing water inflow to the Mediterranean of approximately 36 per cent (excluding the Nile).

Environmental monitoring by wireless communication networks.

The global spread of wireless networks brings a great opportunity for their use in environmental studies. Weather, atmospheric conditions, and constituents cause propagation impairments on radio links. As such, while providing communication facilities, existing wireless communication systems can be used as a widely distributed, high-resolution atmospheric observation network, operating in real time with minimum supervision and without additional cost. Here we demonstrate how measurements of the received signal level, which are made in a cellular network, provide reliable measurements for surface rainfall. We compare the estimated rainfall intensity with radar and rain gauge measurements.