What is the Red Sea Depression?

Weather of Arabia - The Red Sea depression is frequently mentioned in weather bulletins during some periods of the year, and the Red Sea depression greatly affects the distribution of rain in the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant and parts of Egypt. Next report.

What is the Red Sea Depression?

The Red Sea Depression is known as a thermal depression that depends on the thermal differences in its formation, deepening, decay or contraction, which arise between the surface water temperature in the Red Sea basin and the land temperature in the Arabian Peninsula and Sudan. .

Surface pressure values decrease in normal conditions with increasing temperatures, and this explains the reason for the contraction and weakness of the Red Sea depression and its retreat to the south ( towards the south of the Red Sea and eastern Sudan ) in the summer, and its deepening and extension to the north in autumn, winter and spring.

What are the conditions of deepening and contraction of the Red Sea depression?

Red Sea depression conditions

When the heat intensifies in the summer months on the Arabian Peninsula, the land temperature becomes more than the surface water temperature in the Red Sea, which leads to the filling of atmospheric pressure and its high values in the sea, at the expense of the deepening of the seasonal India depression in the east and southeast of the Arabian Peninsula, This is called the contraction of the Red Sea depression in the summer and its retreat to the south.

Red Sea low expansion conditions

As for the autumn season, specifically in the second half of September, the atmosphere becomes more temperate in the Arabian Peninsula, and the surface pressure begins to fill (the pressure values increase and the Indian seasonal depression declines) as a result of the decrease in the surface temperature in the Arabian Peninsula, which generates a suitable environment. In the Red Sea due to the low surface pressure in it, and this is called the deepening of the Red Sea depression and its extension to the north.

The weather conditions suitable for the Red Sea depression continue during the period between mid-September and early May of each year.

How are the effects of the Red Sea depression reflected on the atmosphere?

Arab weather shows that the Red Sea depression is a thermal depression, and its characteristics do not follow the frontal or tropical depressions, and its expansion depends on the north and east on the movement of the cold upper basins that rush from the north, and the effect of the Red Sea depression is in the form of:

High temperatures and dry weather

The Red Sea depression causes a rise in temperatures, and heat waves may occur when its extension is strong. It also causes dry and dusty weather to prevail, and it may form dust waves at times, as a result of east to southeast winds.

Form for atmospheric instability when appropriate weather conditions are available

If the cold upper basins rush from the north towards the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea and northern Egypt and move them to the east, the Red Sea depression responds, moisture rushes from tropical regions of the African continent and the Arabian Sea.

The confluence of the warm air currents resulting from the low expansion of the Red Sea in the lower atmosphere, with the cold air currents in the upper atmosphere, coincides with the high levels of humidity in the atmosphere.

When this dumping occurs, unstable weather conditions arise that result in thunderstorms, and it is worth noting that this is the main reason behind the increased chances of torrential rains in the fall.

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