King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) mooring deployment cruise and fieldwork report, fall 2008 R/V Oceanus voyage 449-5, October 9, 2008–October 14, 2008

Funding for this report was provided by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)under a cooperative research agreement with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is being built near Thuwal,Saudi Arabia with the goal of becoming a world-class, graduate-level research university. As astep toward this goal, KAUST has partnered with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution(WHOI) to undertake various studies of the oceanography of the Red Sea in order to establish aresearch program in ocean sciences by the time the university opens its doors in the fall of 2009.Two of the KAUST-WHOI research projects involve deployment of surface moorings andassociated instrumentation to measure physical properties of the Red Sea, such as temperature,salinity, and currents, at four locations off the coast of Saudi Arabia. The goal of thesemeasurements is to better understand the evolution and dynamics of the circulation and air-seainteraction in the Red Sea. Two surface moorings and two bottom tripods (PI, Steven Lentz)were deployed at 50-55-m depth near 21°57'N, 38°46'E over the continental shelf close to theSaudi coast. An additional surface mooring/bottom tripod pair was deployed near 21°58'N,38°50'E at the outer fringe of a reef system directly onshore of the shelf mooring/tripod pairs (PI,Lentz). The coastal moorings carry instruments to estimate temperature, salinity, andfluorescence; and the nearby bottom tripods support instruments to measure bottom pressure andthe vertical profile of the currents. Additional instruments, principally bottom temperaturesensors, were deployed over the reef system onshore of the shelf moorings. One air-seainteraction mooring (PI, J. Thomas Farrar) was deployed at 693-m depth near 22°10'N, 38°30'E.The air-sea interaction mooring carries instruments for measuring temperature, salinity, (water)velocity, winds, air temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, incident sunlight, infraredradiation, precipitation, and surface waves. A coastal meteorological tower was also installed onthe KAUST campus in Thuwal (PI, Farrar).These measurements are of value because there are few time series of oceanographic andmeteorological properties of the Red Sea that can be used to characterize the circulation, testnumerical models of the Red Sea circulation, or formulate theoretical models of the physics ofthe Red Sea circulation. These measurements will permit a characterization of the Red Seacirculation with high temporal resolution at the mooring locations, and accurate in-situ estimatesof the air-sea exchange of heat, freshwater, and momentum.In October 2008, a cruise was made aboard the R/V Oceanus to deploy the shelf and air-seainteraction moorings, and other fieldwork (e.g., tower instrumentation and deployment of reefinstrumentation) was conducted after the cruise. Some additional data were collected during thecruise with shipboard instrumentation. This report documents the cruise and the data collectedduring the fall 2008 fieldwork.