MIT .King Abdulaziz City for Science, high-climate-impact scenario

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is at a crossroads. Recent long-term studies of the area indicate

that rising temperatures and evaporation rates will likely further deplete scarce water resources critical to

meeting the nation’s agricultural, industrial, and domestic needs; more extreme flooding events could

endanger lives, economic vitality, and infrastructure; and a combination of increasing heat and humidity

levels may ultimately render the kingdom uninhabitable. Facing a foreboding future, how might the

nation adapt to changing climatic conditions and become more resilient to climate extremes?

 

 

 

Due to the KSA’s distinctive natural and artificial features, from coastal landscapes to river beds to

agricultural areas, decision-makers seeking to design actionable plans for regional and local adaptation

and resilience will require projections of the KSA’s mean climate and extreme events at a higher spatial

resolution than what previous studies have produced.     

To that end, a team of researchers from the  and the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology’s

Center for Complex Engineering Systems used a high-resolution, regional climate modeling approach to

generate mid-21st century (2041–2050) projections under a high-emissions, high-climate-impact

scenario. The climate projections carry an unprecedented four-kilometer horizontal resolution and cover

the entire KSA, and focus exclusively on the months of August and November. During these months,

which represent, respectively, the KSA’s dry-hot and wet seasons, extreme events have been observed more frequently.

Applying this modeling approach, the team projected increasing temperatures by mid-century across the

KSA, including five strategic locations — the capital city of Riyadh, religious tourism destinations Makkah

and Madinah, the designated future tourist site of Tabuk, and the port city of Jeddah — in both August

and November, and a rising August heat index (high heat and humidity) that particularly threatens

regional habitability in Jeddah due to an increasing frequency of extreme heat index days.

The researchers also found an increase in the intensity and frequency of precipitation events in August

by mid-century, particularly along the nation’s mountainous western coast, suggesting a potential for

water harvesting — that could replenish local aquifers and supplement water supplies elsewhere — as a

regional climate adaptation strategy to avert future water scarcity. The projections also showed a

significant decline in precipitation rates in a sizeable stretch of desert extending from the southern

portion of the country known as the Empty Quarter.