Researchers from NYU Abu Dhabi’s Arabian Center for Climate and Environmental Science (ACCESS) and Water Research Center have examined how future climate change and greater usage of desalination technology may alter salinity across the Gulf.
The major users of desalination technologies to supply freshwater are the countries that border the Arabian Gulf.
It is unknown what impact increased desalination will have on the Gulf’s marine ecosystems and fisheries. Greater amounts of hypersaline (high-salt) brine will be released into the Gulf.
In the paper titled “Long-term, basin-scale salinity impacts from desalination in the Arabian/Persian Gulf,” published in Scientific Reports, the researchers found that, even under a worst-case climate change and projected desalination scenario, salinity increases will be well within the range of natural salinity variation due to evaporation.
Since marine life has become accustomed to the high and fluctuating natural salinity, these slight salinity variations are not anticipated to have an impact on the ecology at the Gulf scale.
One important discovery was that any rise in salinity would cause a comparable rise in the flux across the Hormuz strait, causing the Gulf waters to renew more quickly.
Because these levels of salinity increase are well within the natural range of variability that organisms in the Gulf are already exposed to, even in the worst-case scenarios, basin-scale salinity increases are not projected to exceed a level that will have a significant impact on the marine life of the Gulf, such as flora and fauna.
As shown in prior articles by these scientists and others at NYUAD, hypoxia, low or depleted oxygen levels in a body of water, appears to pose a greater hazard to marine life in both the deepest region of the Gulf and in the shallow reefs, circumstances that are unrelated to desalination brine flow.
While prior modelling studies have attempted to quantify the growth of salinity at basin-wide scales owing to desalination, this is the first model of its sort to additionally consider the likely future consequences of climate change.
It is crucial to take into account the long-term implications of this business because the Gulf region is home to the largest desalination plant complexes in the world and produces 45% of the world’s freshwater desalination.
The data acquired describing the projected levels of salinity in the Gulf coastal waters can guide the future study of the other effects of extensive desalination, such as the economic impacts of changes to the fishing industry.
“Our team’s research provides valuable, new insights into the impacts of this critical industry for the Gulf region,” said Francesco Paparella, Principal Investigator at the NYUAD Arabian Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences. “We have developed a reliable model that has allowed us to predict changes in salinity over the next few decades, advancing the ability of our team and the greater scientific community to determine ways to protect our ecosystems better.”
“The Gulf is a naturally extreme marine system, and we have been utilizing a growing fraction of its waters for desalination purposes.
This raises concerns about whether this may have ecological consequences, particularly in this era of a rapidly changing climate,” said John Burt, Co-Principal Investigator at the NYUAD Water Research Center and the Arabian Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences.
Dr. Burt added, “the results of this work show that salinity increases under even the worst-case climate projections and increased desalination in coming decades are likely to have only negligible impacts on salinity at the Gulf-wide scale, and well within the normal seasonal variation in salinity that organisms here are already exposed to.
While we need further research on processes occurring at more localized scales around desalination plants, these results suggest that there is little cause for concern of salinity increases at the Gulf-wide scale.”
Source: New York University
