UAE: EAD completes first Atmospheric Research Expedition in Arabian Gulf

The Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD) announced that it has completed the first-ever Atmospheric Research Expedition in the Arabian Gulf onboard its state-of-the-art marine research vessel – Jaywun.The Agency was the first organisation in the world to conduct atmospheric research from Spain to Abu Dhabi, which covered 25 countries and eight seas and oceans on a journey of more than 10,000 km from December 2022 to January 2023, also onboard Jaywun.

The pioneering Atmospheric Research Expedition in the Arabian Gulf undertook a comprehensive examination of the transportation and the subsequent transformation of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides.The campaign also sought to assess how pollution from the Arabian Gulf is transported to other regions and to evaluate its contribution to the formation of ozone in the UAE.

The expedition was a collaboration between EAD and the Climate and Atmosphere Research Center (CARE-C) of The Cyprus Institute from Cyprus and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry from Germany.In addition, the project received assistance from scientists from the University of Bremen in Germany and the Climate and Environment Sciences Laboratory in France. The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia will also be involved when the project reaches the model simulation stage.

Faisal Hammadi, Executive Director of Environmental Quality Sector, said, “Following our extremely successful Atmospheric Research Expedition from Vigo in Spain to Abu Dhabi in the UAE to measure air quality, we have now completed the first ever atmospheric research expedition in the Arabian Gulf using the