Wet-bulb Temperature and Sea-level Rise in the United Arab Emirates – Planning Responses

ABSTRACT

Increased heat stress and sea-level rise, associated with climate change could threaten the viability of some cities by the latter part of this century. This paper reviews urban development patterns in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, and concludes these cities are highly vulnerable to elevated wet-bulb temperatures and sea level rise. This is predominantly due to the focus of development along the Gulf coastline, where these issues are concentrated. In response, this paper ventures regional planning responses to adapt to these threats through decentralising populations to inland areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Heat stress
• Wet-bulb temperature
• sea-level rise
• Arabian Gulf
• climate change
• Dubai
• Abu Dhabi
• climate responsive design

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) were used in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2014 as a basis for the report’s findings. RCP 4.5 relates to a medium effort to curb emissions, 8.5 to a low effort to curb emissions (CoastAdapt, 2015).

2. Only part of this proposed gargantuan island is now being constructed.

3. A long duration Shamal with winds blowing consistently from the north west can result in a positive storm surge of up to 4 m at Jazirat Ghagha, a near-shore recording station some 200 km west of Abu Dhabi city (Garland, 2010, p. 140).

4. Modelling suggests that it is reasonable to assume that there will be eight occurrences of 4 m waves along the Abu Dhabi shoreline before 2099 (Garland, 2010, p. 141).

5. These assessments are based on modelling undertaken since the most recent IPCC Assessment Report 5 in 2014.

6. The summer months in Dubai are May, June, July August, September.

7. We recognize that one constituent element of WBT is DBT however have included both in our suitability analysis because distributions of WBT and DBT are quite different across the UAE.

8. The AHP and Macbeth approaches are slightly different. AHP uses 9-point fundamental scales (ratio scale), whereas MACBTEH uses six semantic scale (ordinal scale). In addition, for calculating weight and scale, MACBETH uses liner programing method, whereas AHP uses eigenvalue method (Rietkötter, 2014).

9. The Gulf state of Qatar is air-conditioning outdoor stadiums that will be used for the 2022 soccer World Cup.

10. The average maximum temperature for Al Ain in August is 44.6°C (National Centre for Meteorology, 2017b) while in Abu Dhabi it is 42.9°C (National Centre for Meteorology, 2017a).