This link contains the slides that I used on a recent discussion with my colleagues at the Marine Biology Laboratory of NYUAD led by prof. John Burt.

They document some preliminary results obtained by my student Chenhao Xu. They compare the temperature at the bottom of the sea simulated through a water column model with those observed in-situ, in an attempt to elucidate which are the physical factors that cause (or avoid) excessive bottom temperatures during the summer.

It turns out that the main factor keeping the water cool (or, at least, not unbearably hot) during summer is the sustained presence of strong winds. Those enhance the evaporative cooling, which, at the temperatures of the Summer in the Gulf can lead to peaks in excess of 400 W/m\(^2\) in the latent heat flux.

Our work is progressing by fine-tuning the model and switching to the new ERA5 reanalysis for the meteorological parameters that force the water column model.