The Middle East is home to about 350 million people. It is endowed with about half the proven oil and gas reserves on the planet, and also has rich solar resources. The Middle East also has exceptional environmental qualities, with extensive deserts, and is among the most water-scarce regions on Earth. It is subject to dust storms and heat extremes, and in some parts photochemical air pollution is unparalleled (Alizadeh-Choobari et al., 2014). Model simulations show that climate change in the Middle East is associated with particularly rapid warming in summer, and that effectively the hot desert climate is intensifying (Lelieveld et al., 2016). When the surface temperature increases over dry desert soils, relative humidity decreases, which promotes dust mobilization (Klingmuller et al., 2016). Although the Middle East is a global change hot spot, it receives relatively little attention, e.g., in reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC,2013). One reason is that observational data are insufficient, unavailable or of limited quality.
AQABA was a comprehensive ship borne measurement and modeling campaign of reactive gases and particles, to study the pronounced regional contrasts that occur in atmospheric pollutant and dust concentrations. It took place in summer 2017 covering a track from Toulon, France to Kuwait through the Mediterranean and around the Arabian Peninsula and back.
The session invites all relevant contributions from the region and results from the AQABA campaign will be presented.