MODELING THE RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE

KAUST’s Newest Center is Supporting Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

The newest center to launch at KAUST combines leading research in modeling and simulation, data science and artificial intelligence, with predictive guidance for scenario planning to help the Kingdom respond to climate change and environmental emergencies.

Inaugurated in March 2023, in conjunction with the Ministry of Energy, Water and Agriculture and the National Center for Meteorology, the KAUST Climate Change Center builds upon 14 years of climate and weather studies and troves of observational and simulation data. KAUST’s supercomputing facilities are essential infrastructure for the center, resourced by data gathered via partnerships with Earth-monitoring organizations at KAUST and around the world.

The new center is part of a raft of initiatives announced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud at the Middle East Green Initiative Summit in 2022. It will support policy responses to climate change and help mitigate the effects of climate change environmentally, economically and socially.

“The Climate Change Center will be the new center of gravity and coordinating authority for climate change science in Saudi Arabia and the region.”

TONY CHAN President of KAUST

The center is led by Professor Ibrahim Hoteit, a KAUST founding faculty member and global authority in data assimilation, which is the process of continually updating a computational model with real-time observations to “nudge” the model and prevent it from drifting away from the physical state of interest. Computational models of the Earth’s atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial system –with inputs from the sun, solid earth and human activity – have achieved a high degree of fidelity. However, it is not possible to supply them with the initial state and boundary conditions that their mathematics require, and they contain

Mewa

“The Climate Change Center represents a pivotal step forward in our country’s commitment to tackle climate change. Through cutting-edge research and collaboration, we will empower the Kingdom towards a sustainable and resilient future.” parameters that can only be estimated. For predictive power, models must be continually refreshed with observations.

Observational data is available only at selected locations and times and is subject to error, which physics-based models can constrain. KAUST has acquired many petabytes of environmental data and is continuing to build this resource.

Much of this data is unique in the world when it comes to the regional atmosphere and the surrounding Red Sea and Arabian Gulf.

As the Kingdom turns to harvesting intermittent forms of renewable energy such as solar and wind to produce electricity, hydrogen or desalinated water, it will increasingly depend on accurate forecasting of timevarying quantities – namely, the supply of renewables and demand for products. The same forecasting tools are useful for planning and resourcing agricultural growing seasons and tourism opportunities. They also play a role in anticipating and containing damage from disasters like oil spills or fires, whose plumes can span hundreds of kilometers.

The center is charged with developing stateof-the-art tools and user interfaces to help Kingdom planners, who need not become climate or weather experts themselves, understand the environmental forces that affect their domains of responsibility.

During the inauguration of the center, Abdulrahman bin Abdulmohsen AlFadley, Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture and Chairman of the National Center of Meteorology Board of Directors, stressed the importance of the Climate Change Center as a strategic initiative to enhance the Kingdom’s environmental performance, and strengthen its role and commitment to the regional and global fight against climate change. Dr. Ayman bin Salem Ghulam, CEO of the National Center for Meteorology, underscored that the center will play a pivotal role in helping realize Vision 2030 goals aimed at sustainable development.

ALPHABET’S PROJECT TAARA

Telecommunications specialists at KAUST recently collaborated with Alphabet’s Project Taara team to close the connectivity gap in remote locations by deploying affordable, high-speed internet access. Project Taara is a moonshot connectivity project at X (formerly Google X) that aims to enhance wireless access in hard-to-connect locations. The KAUST researchers are seeking to build on the success of their recent trial by conducting a thorough evaluation under real-world conditions. Their objective is to enhance the technology to ultimately support the expansion of internet access across the Kingdom.

Wireless connectivity can help provide internet access to remote areas, such as rural villages and isolated maritime locations like Saudi Arabia’s islands, which are being developed as tourist destinations. At present, fiber optics (FO) are used to deliver high-speed connectivity, but the technology is expensive and not suitable for all locations. Another option is radio frequency (RF), but it often has issues with interference, as well as speed constraints. Professor Mohamed-Slim Alouini and a team of researchers at KAUST, led by PhD candidate Fahad Al-Qurashi, are testing the viability of a low-cost, laser-based technology known as free space optics (FSO) in the Kingdom, which is an alternative to FO and RF. KAUST uses a so-called network-in-a-box configuration to package the technology, making it suitable for areas that lack fixed infrastructure.

FSO is a line-of-sight technology that uses light propagating in free space, such as air, outer space or a vacuum, to wirelessly transmit video, voice and data at speeds of up to 20 Gbps. It is typically used in conditions where FO cable connections cannot be used due to cost.

KAUST and Project Taara successfully achieved FSO high-speed connections at 20 Gbps, first between the KAUST shore and Umm Misk