Rationale
Saudi Arabia is one of the most water-scarce regions in the world, and one of the regions which is most sensitive to the external radiative forcing of greenhouse gases and aerosols. As a part of the global climate system, the Arabian Peninsula experience continuous changes of climate characteristics, sea-level rise, and increasing frequency of extreme events such as sand storms and flash floods. Data analysis and model simulations show that over the last 30 years, temperature over the Arabian Peninsula has been increasing almost 1 K/decade, exceeding the Northern Hemisphere mean trend. The observed changes are more pronounced in summer than in winter. 

In addition to natural hazards, rapid social and economic development and urbanization impose enormous pressure on environmental systems, water resources, agriculture, landscapes, and air quality. For example, the population of Saudi Arabia from 1960 to 2018 increased from 4 million to 34 million.  Saudi Arabia produces more than a quarter of the world’s desalinated water and uses 80% of its electricity production (equivalent to 3 million barrels of oil per day) for air-conditioning.

A better understanding of current changes and better predictions of future climate variations are enormously important for long-term planning, sustainable development, and effective use of renewable energy resources. Advanced decision-making on the regional, national, and international levels in support of sustainable development, prevention of technological disasters, and the aiding of mitigation and adaption to ongoing climate change, should be based on a solid scientific background.

 Thus, the objectives of my research group are to develop this fundamental scientific basis for supporting environmental policy and adaptation and mitigation measures in Saudi Arabia.  Our research goals include calculating an improved climate forecast for the Arabian Peninsula; evaluating the effects of dust and anthropogenic aerosols on air quality and Middle East climate; assessing wind and solar power resources; developing and evaluating models to predict the effects of regional-to-global scale catastrophic events and industrial failures to environmental systems.

Modeling
For global climate modeling we utilize a unique global atmospheric model (HiRAM) that runs with 100 times higher spatial resolution than conventional global models.  We also employ an up-to-date coupled climate model, CM2.1.  Both models were adapted from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, the leader in this field.  For regional applications we use the Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) model from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), enhanced by the chemical and aerosol module (WRF-Chem) which allows us to calculate important processes such as dust storms, and radiative impact of dust. Currently our group is among the most active users of the Shaheen Supercomputing Facility at KAUST.

Observations
Since 2011 my group has been conducting the first systematic ground-based aerosol observations at the Red Sea. The results obtained are published at the NASA AERONET Maritime Aerosol Network website. 

In March 2012 we installed a CIMEL Robotic Sunphotometer on the roof of the KAUST Coastal and Marine Resources Core Lab (CMOR) building. It is currently the only operating AERONET site in Saudi Arabia. This instrument measures aerosol characteristics over KAUST every 15 minutes. The KAUST observations are published at the NASA AERONET website.

In 2014 we established the NASA Micropulse Lidar Network (MPLNET) site at KAUST for measuring aerosol vertical distribution in the atmosphere. It is currently one of the four active collocated AERONET/MPLNET sites in the world. Data from the KAUST site can be obtained from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Web Site https://mplnet.gsfc.nasa.gov/.

My group was also involved in the Air Quality and Climate Change in the Arabian Basin (AQABA) campaign (in cooperation with Max Planck Institute for Chemistry) https://www.kaust.edu.sa/en/news/the-aqaba-project, aimed at measuring air quality characteristics in summer 2017 along the Arabian Peninsula coastline, and conducted aerosol measurements within the scope of the Balloon Measurements of the Asian Tropopause Aerosol Layer (BATAL) project in cooperation with NASA Langley in August of 2015 and 2016 at KAUST campus https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/using-balloons-to-track-pollution-into-the-stratosphere.

AchievementsUsing the above methodology, my group has studied various aspects of dust impact on the Middle East climate and environmental processes at both the global and regional scale. The results include the evaluation of the impact of Saharan dust on the tropical rain belt and Sahel rainfall; future projection of West African monsoon; simulation the impact of volcanic eruptions on the Middle East climate and the Red Sea; impact of dust on the Red Sea; impact of dust and anthropogenic emissions on the air quality over the  Middle East; measuring dust deposition rate; and study of chemical, mineralogical, and microphysical properties of dust particles.